


When They Forgot

by literal_human_garbage, Sin_with_a_Grin



Series: When They ... [3]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Amnesiac Bill Cipher, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Bill Cipher Being Bill Cipher, Bill Cipher/Dipper Pines Fluff, Billdip Smut Week, Billdip Week, Bottom Dipper Pines, God Bill Cipher, Healthy Bill Cipher/Dipper Pines, Light BDSM, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Older Dipper Pines, Possessive Bill Cipher, Soul Bond, Top Bill Cipher, continuation fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-09-09 15:36:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 28,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8897494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literal_human_garbage/pseuds/literal_human_garbage, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sin_with_a_Grin/pseuds/Sin_with_a_Grin
Summary: Dipper Pines is all grown up now, facing his demons... but it's a little more literal than he'd like. And it's just the one, really... Continued from When They Knew.





	1. When the day met the night

**Author's Note:**

> Bill’s note: This begins in media res! But not where we left off. For those of you just joining us, this fic has a FINISHED prequel “When They Knew”, also in this series. You should check it out! *Shamelessly stalls the new people with shinies as he scurries to write this fic up from all the ideas we have...* For the rest of you, welcome back! Thanks for following us here! Onward!

I hadn’t expected to wake up ever again. That explosion of light had surely been all my neurons bursting inside my skull; but then, what else had I expected from a Hail Mary like that?

Eyelids seemed as though they were made of lead, heavy and rough against the smooth surface of my eyes. Getting them open seemed impossible at this point. It gave me time to notice other things, like the scent of crushed pine needles under my face, the loam under my fingers, how incredibly cold I felt. Not surprising for December… That got my eyes open; what the hell was I doing outside in December?

I immediately regretted opening my eyes and closed them just as quickly. The flasher sitting cross legged in front of my face was way too close, but with any luck he wouldn’t notice I was -  
  
“Oh good, you’re awake!”  
  
-shit.

“I wasn’t quite sure what temperature your body needed to be at … couldn’t remember if it was 309 or 310 Kelvin, so I’ve been switching between them every couple of minutes or so. You humans are quite sensitive about that sort of thing... You’ve been out for at least 8 hours, but your brain wasn’t working correctly so I just let it do it’s own thing. Not uh… not sure if your silence is an improvement or a bad sign, to be honest…”

I looked him over as he babbled, trying not to scream from the noise. His voice… where the hell had I heard this naked blonde’s voice befo- Oh my god.

I scrambled back crab style, trying not to do anything to (further) embarrass myself, like squeak. “B-Bill?!”

He lifted an eyebrow and tilted his head in confusion. His eyes were two different colors; one iris was a hazel so light it was nearly gold… the other was a bright electric blue, horrible scars around it, looking like little lightning streaks on his cheekbone and eyebrow. I’d never really anthropomorphize Bill Cipher, had never had a thought of what he might look like as a human… I’m ashamed to say that he was quite easy on the eyes. He was fit without looking obnoxious, relatively tan, smooth skin and… well, I could see every inch of him.

It was horrifying. “Please tell me this is a nightmare…”  
  
He looked down at the body and frowned, tilting his head the other way. “Did I do it wrong? I thought you meatbags might not mind something like this…”  
  
“What do you want, Bill Cipher?” I cut him off, I’m not usually that rude or terse, but I had no time or patience for this demon.

“Oh is -that- my name? Hmm… Bill… Cipher. Interesting. Whoever I am, I do know that you’re mine now, so …”

“Excuse me?”

“Did I stutter? What did you get stuck on, mud monkey?”

“I do NOT belong to you -”

“Oh yeah that whole freedom thing… that'd make a good musical...”

“Or anyone else! The day I do a thing you ask of me will be my last!”

He grinned slowly, his teeth looking far too sharp to be on a human. “Well then I think we're both in luck kid… you see I don't remember how the deal went down and from where I'm standing, that means you probably got the drop on me. That's impressive… and dangerous.” He'd managed to stand up now so I scrambled to my feet too - no way was I gonna have this conversation at his feet or looking right at his cock. “A deal this good? For you to be able to blank me out like this…” what did that mean? “That makes you a liability. Nothing personal, you understand, right kid?” Blue fire sprang from his fingers as he stalked forward, circling my neck and wrists, the chains wrapping around me slowly.

I jerked in the magical hold and grit my teeth. “I am not your puppet, Bill Cipher, no matter how much of a fool you think I am to fall for _that_ bullshit; I'm not so easy to put down!” I shoved at the insubstantial chains, thinking to bluff my way out, keep him talking (in the movies, the villains always talk too long and the dashing young hero, me in this case, gets away while they're busy stroking themselves off) but I didn't need to. The chains fell away, returning to soft blue smoke and we both watched them dissolve, then stared at each other for a heartbeat.

I was bolting away from the naked freak before he got his jaw off the ground. I sprinted for the shack, praying that the strength of the enchantment would outlive the man who put them there… No, Dipper, no time to mourn now! Have to get away from …

He was waiting for me on the step to the porch, looking almost… nervous. When he stood he held his hands up, looked me over and shook himself a little. As he studied me, clothing began to form on his body… black and yellow plaid, black jeans, black work boots. Figured.

“Hear me out…”

“Why the hell would I do that?!”

His eyes flashed, the different colors making me a little ill now… and suddenly I was a lot colder. He'd stopped keeping me warm. “Because I'm between you and the door.”

I said nothing, but the demon had a point. Folding my arms was dual purpose now… it was more skeptical body language and it also kept my hands warm.

His gaze softened a little, the heatwave returned, and he dropped his hands, slipping them in his pockets. “It's clear that you know me, and other than the pine tree you have on your journal, I have nothing to call you. I have no idea what happened and judging by how much you hate me, you're in no great hurry to explain. So can we just call a truce for now? I'll allow you to go in -”

“To my own house? How kind of you.”

He glared at my snarky comment. “- and get warm.”

Sniping with him was kinda fun. “Oh _thank you,_ your benevolence! I am moved by your gracious provision for your _humble_ servant!” I swept past him with an insincere bow. I didn't mention the new triangle tattoo I'd seen on the inside of my wrist. Seems he might be right. Shit.

He snorted, folding his arms too. “Don't push it, bloodbag. I might yet change my mind.”

And that's how I ended up with a demon in my bedroom, hyperventilating, teeth chattering in the shower. Kill me now.


	2. How Far We've Come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How on Earth did we get Here?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill’s note: A little backtracking never hurt anyone...

I guess I should explain myself.

 

Six and a half years ago, when we won back the town from Bill Cipher and passed the Nevermind All That Act, most of the people of Gravity Falls were able to forget what happened and rebuild their … balance together. But Mabel and I left, and the Stans left and… well, we didn’t. We were the most affected, the most injured. We didn’t find comfort in the censure, couldn’t stand to be around all the people and their happy return to ‘normal’. When you get that close to a demon, it damages you.

Ford and Stan seemed to really take a hit. I’m sure they thought they’d be fine out on the open seas, but they returned before Christmas, all banged up. New scars and badly mended bones, irreparable damage to the Stan ‘o’ War II, some of it from slap bang repairs. We retired her in a wooden berth next to the Shack. Stan tried to go back to running tours, telling all sorts of stories about the various bangs and marks on the boat, most of them true, but eventually his limp was too bad to continue.

Grunkle Ford lasted in the field a little longer than his twin but… that was to his detriment. E-either he’s … still out there, squirreled away in one of his hideouts o-or we just haven’t found the body yet.

Mabel’s always been a little spoiled. I can’t tell her no, never have been able to, but after complete control over Mabeland, she's been barely recognizable. Demanding and critical of anything that isn’t just so or doesn’t go her way, she’s actually managed to find a career path that suits her: Fashion. Thankfully, the twenty-teens are kind to her outrageous color scheme and mad love of accessories; she’s not what I’d call stable but she’s found other slightly less insane people that understand her. For that, I’m extremely grateful. I can’t tolerate her anymore.

As for me, those haunting words ‘TRUST NO ONE’ have really taken over my life. I’m not sure if he spent the last 6 years haunting me from another dimension or I’m just clinically insane, but I see his eyes _everywhere._ He is in every nook, cranny and keyhole. I know… well, used to know, that that was false, that I was being paranoid… and one day, I finally worked up the guts to prove it.

This past summer, on my birthday of all days, I decided to go see the three sided statue myself, just to make sure it was still there. Nothing around him had moved or changed since I was 13. The horror seemed so far away, I just broke down laughing. Like a lunatic, in the middle of the forest, at Bill Cipher.

I’m aware now that I was asking for it, but at the time, it was a catharsis unlike any other. I was no longer the little boy he’d tormented and scared half to death, though my family maintained I’d seen less damage from Bill Cipher. (Apparently, wearing your skin for a day isn’t -nearly- the mind fuck that they all went through. I conceded the argument because Ford looked so dead when he said it, but Mabel and Stanley were about on my level.)

It was hubris, pure and simple. I walked around the statue, silently daring myself to touch it, remember the horror. It all seemed so distant now, so far removed from my current life. The fateful mistake happened when I turned to look at the hand and said with a smirk “Wanna make a Deeeeal??” just like he used to. I swear I didn’t touch the damn thing. I didn’t. I KNOW I didn’t. It … must have been static, or maybe just the phrase? B-but the next thing I knew, Bill was peeling back the stone with a noise like fingernails on a chalkboard, cackling like usual. “WhY yEs PiNe TrEe, I tHoUgHt YoU’d NeVeR aSk!” His voice gives me nightmares alone. I can’t stand it.

What did I … What do you mean, what did I do? I booked it the fuck out of there! Ran all the way home; and that’s almost 9 miles, mind you. He kept calling me, calling for me to come back, crazy shit like he’d been waiting for me and I just… When I reached the house, I threw every lock in the place, then curled up in a ball on Grunkle Stan’s chair and cried. The nightmare was back. And I’d brought it back.

...but nothing happened. For days. I literally sat in the den and gathered snacks around me during full daylight, went to an inside wall bathroom every time, but nothing happened. No one knocked, nothing weird on the radio or the television… No Weirdmageddon 2. After the fourth day of hiding, I peeked out a window to see Bill sitting on the totem pole, kicking his tiny stick legs and twiddling his shortest digits together… And then he _waved._ Like, looked up at me and waved. His hat even straightened, like he was happy to see me. I shut the curtains, panicked, and was thoroughly sick from nerves. What was he planning!?

And then the monsters started coming. In little flocks. Wounds inflicted on each of them; nothing fatal but enough to incapacitate. Something had driven them to my doorstep. Ha, _something_. For some reason, the demon was driving all of the more rare creatures onto the property. I studied them, of course, then patched them up and tried to send them back home. Some refused, afraid of the forest now and the demon that hunted in it.

What was he doing? It was a bit like having a cat. Cats actually exhibit this behavior, bringing their humans prey, when they feel as though the human can’t take care of himself. Is that what he was saying? Was he mocking me? A warning? It was maddening.

Eventually, ‘we’ ran out of the more docile creatures to torment, and ‘we’ found a particularly nasty batch of monsters: chimera. A whole flock(?) of them came after _me_ when Bill delivered one that was so injured it was near death. It actually died while in my care, and who’d’ve thought, the chimeras weren’t all that happy with me, the guy who had a chimera corpse on his porch. They came at twilight, their wings darkening the sky as I tried to haul the poor creature off the driveway. I thought I was certainly going to die… but instead I found myself showered with blood, gore, and I had to scramble away from the heavy animals as they fell. Such senseless violence. I didn’t want to study them that badly! I’d have settled for seeing ONE, ever, and he m-murdered an entire pack of them right on top of me.

There was a bit of a reprieve after that. He’d never talked to me; or if he had, I wasn’t listening. I took so many sleep aids… Did you know Nyquil puts you into Stage 4 sleep and prevents successful REM? That’s why you wake up so groggy, I think. It’s really good stuff if you’re trying to avoid having a demon barge into your head every five minutes. Nyquil at night, Dayquil and coffee during the day.

I couldn’t take anymore. Last night, I stepped out of the barrier and went walking until I knew he was following me. He hadn’t harmed me thus far. I didn’t think he’d start now.  
  
“What do you want Cipher?!” I screamed at him, turning on my heel.  
  
He laughed. Just laughed.

“This isn’t funny, Bill! I’m not a kid anymore. Y-” I cleared my throat to keep from stuttering. “You don’t scare me.”  
  
He just laughed harder, but this time he replied. “Ah Pine Tree. You Crack Me UP! I want what I’ve always wanted. YOU!” His sickly eye spun as he talked, going through the symbols until it rested on mine and I gulped. Hard. I had one last thought, one ace up my sleeve, but I had to play this right.  
  
“That’s what you wanted? All along?” I scoffed, playing it cool. “Why didn’t you ask, we could have ended this sooner.”  
  
He shook a little, twiggy little limbs splaying like a cat’s and shaking a little in his excitement. “Really!?” He’d clearly waited a long time to hear those words; no idea why and at this point I didn’t care. I’d found a weakness.

“And in return, I - “

More laughing! “What makes you think it matters what you want? Anything! I’ll do anything.” He extended his hand, glee and excitement evident in every molecule.  
  
“I just want help with one more monster … One last… measly little monster. Then I’m all yours, Bill.”  
  
_“You’re stalling. Tell me who you want whacked and shake on it!”_

“Who is it?” I grabbed his little twiggy hand, grinning as the wind picked up. I was going to die tonight. Bill Cipher was going to murder me because I was touching him at this very moment, and I didn’t care. I was taking him with me. “IT’S YOU, BILL. GO FUCK YOURSELF.” I went for the demon gun in my shoulder holster, but it was clumsy in my left hand….

Didn’t matter anyways. Everything went white, the noise was deafening, and the stars of a million galaxies exploded in my head as I died.

  
  
Or at least, that’s what it felt like. As you may have gathered from my ability to tell you this story, I’m not dead. Imagine that!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have a very general idea of where this is going. This part: set in stone. Other parts? Still in the works. Keep checking back in! See you soonish!


	3. Truce

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill's note: Sorry to take so long guys! Holidays got crazy. Enjoy!

“Why are you in my bedroom anyways?” I thanked my foresight to always kept a second towel in the bathroom as I paced into the next room. Bill was sitting on my bed… well, hovering over it. 

He looked perplexed, tilting his head again. He certainly looked like a cat… I had a moment of panic. What if he was lying. What if he remembered everything. Hah. Of course he was lying. Damned demon. He was Bill Fucking Cipher. All he does is li-

“What are you thinking about? You went from … charmed to skeptic to terrified there.” He was just watching me, not making any move towards me, despite his earlier threat.

“Nevermind that, I asked you a question.” _Trust No One._   
  
“Fine. I’m in here because you’re in here, and you’re the only person around. You know who I am, you were there when I first opened my eyes -”  
  
“Wait. Say that again?”  
  
“I’m new here.”  
  
“You’re really not.”  
  
“News to me kid, I have no memories before I showed up in a body next to you in those woods. I stayed with you because you bear my mark; and even that is a guess. I …” He frowned, looked down at his hands, which he was twisting in his lap out of reflex it would seem and fisted his hands separately.

I blinked. He looked upset, tense, unsure; words I’d never in a million years have associated with Bill Cipher. I tried for haughty, the hard sell. “Listen, if you want my help, you’re going to have to tell me everything.”    
  
“I didn’t ask for your help!” He snapped, but calmed down after a second. Nerves? Almost like an animal, backed into a corner… a  _ caged _ animal. “I found the triangle on your wrist. It looked like a burn, so I touched it... “ A glint came to his eye then, and he smirked… soooo many teeth. “The manacles appeared, like I showed you earlier, and I was holding the chain. Seems to be a clear indication to me, don’t you think?”   
  
My thumb rubbed over the triangle on reflex at that, returning his smirk with a glare. “Well they didn’t stand up to much resistance, did they?” I snapped, incensed.    
  
His smug look deepened; drat, he’d just been trying to fluster me. I looked away stubbornly as he continued. “So I figure I’m the triangle then, and if symbols matter so much here, can I call you Pine Tr-”   
  
“NO!” I snapped, throwing the second towel at him. “Get out! Get out get out get out!”    
  
He caught it, a slow smile on his face forming. “I’m happy to hold the other for you if you like…”    
  
I nearly snarled and went for the bedside table. I had the demon gun in there, visible as I yanked the drawer open. He didn’t seem to be a full demon anymore, something had changed, but this would certainly do more than tickle. When I turned, holding it with both hands, his mocking laughter was all that remained; he was just gone. To add insult to injury, the towel fell seconds later, leaving me naked with a demon in my house. The gun dropped to my side, my other hand coming to my mouth to hold in my soft sob as my eyes overflowed. He was still so powerful! And he could get in the house now! The world tilted and I fell to my knees, wheezing hard as I braced my hands on my knees and tried not to throw up. The shaking was bad enough; would I have even got a shot off before dropping the gun? It fell to the floor with a clatter and my resistance gave out. I grabbed the towel and sobbed brokenly into the soft nap. He was here. My Hail Mary had only made him weak enough for the protection spell to cease working.

But if that was true, why was he basically doing what I asked?

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

When I made it back downstairs fully dressed and dry, I tried so hard not to look around for him. Maybe if I just played it cool, we wouldn't have to get into some long winded discussion about everything. 

I was pleasantly surprised when he wasn’t waiting for me. Well, fine. I’d just … make something to eat. Mac and cheese wasn’t beyond the purview of my culinary talents. Mabel used to show me how to bake and cook but since she always bedazzled everything including her food… 

My hand froze over the pot, looking down at the contents. Yellow. Mabel w-would’ve put gold glitter in it. I stared for another minute, fighting my panic attack. Shit! I couldn’t even make basic meals without thinking about him. I’m surprised I managed to turn off the hob before I bolted to the bathroom. Years of anxiety attacks had taught me how to be nearly silent when I threw up … but that didn’t fool the demon. 

Within seconds, he was knocking on the door. “Hey, what was that disgusting noise? Also, why do you have a shrine to triangles in a hidden room? I thought you didn’t like me, Pine Tree….!”

I hung my head, squeezing my eyes shut to keep from crying. Again. “Don’t call me that.”   
  
“Then tell me your name!”   
  
“Go to hell.”    
  
“Only after I drag you down with me,” he purred, and I wretched again at the implication.    
  
“That shit isn’t mine, and the person who put it there is dead, alright? You… your fault. You broke him. So just… leave that shit alone!” I flung open the door to find him holding the statues and candelabra from Ford’s secret study. I grabbed them from him while he stood there slack jawed, so I got in his face. “Move.” He backed away, hands held up in surrender as I stomped off to replace them in the little shrine. I wasn’t even sure how he'd found them, or why I was defending Ford on this. I really should throw this garbage out but… I couldn't bring myself to do so. 

And somewhere in the back of my head, I heard the softest glimmer of a voice, not even a whisper, more of a feeling …  _ You might need it _ .

I spun around, expecting him to be there, in my space, whispering into my ear… but it was just paranoia. He was downstairs. So I stomped back up to my room to try and sleep, chugging half the bottle of Nyquil before letting my eyes close. 

I should really see if anything stronger works. 


	4. Of Monsters and ... Men?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill’s note: When we were creating this story, we rushed this part a lot because we wanted them to get ‘cozy’ (if you know what i mean) asap… but it’s really not going to work in the story now. The time I’m taking here is like airing out a wine; the story needs time to breathe.

As soon as I opened my eyes again, I realized what a mistake this had been. How did I think I could sleep with Bill in the house? I tried to keep from bolting upright once I remembered; I was going to wrench something and then where would I be? What if I had to run? No, running wouldn’t do me any good… would it? I just lay there a moment, trying to remember what was in the house, what could he have gotten into over night that would make things worse… nothing was on fire that I could smell, he didn’t seem to be in the room at the moment. I shrugged and stretched my way out of bed, trying to work out the kinks in my back from sleeping so curled up. 

 

I couldn’t just stay here anymore. I needed to get out and doing stuff again. My research, trying to track Ford, repairing the Shack. I packed up my knapsack, ignoring Bill when he walked in and hovered around me, trying to figure out what I was doing. Finally, I turned to him. “What?” I snapped.    
  
He held his hands up, looking innocent. “Just wondering if you were gonna ever explain all this. I’m still in the dark here. Your journal -”   
  
“You stay out of that!”   
  
“Said that Bill Cipher was a chaos demon… that you fought him and won, with your family… that he tore this town apart… that he was a statue..“ He looks down at his hands, brow furrowed. 

 

I regarded him with a cool gaze. At least he knew now, we could get somewhere. “And?”   
  
“You called me Bill Cipher.” He looked troubled by this, fiddling with his nails. Embarrassed, confused, what on earth was up with this human version?    
  
“Yeah, that’s because you are Bill Cipher. What are you going to tell me next, that you couldn’t have done all those things?”   
  
He scoffed a little, a bit of a smirk on his face. “Oh no, that sounds like a grand time to me. But I can’t remember that; can’t take credit for something I don’t remember.” He looked at me, confused. “Why you? Why did I follow you around? I … read the maroon ones too. That guy summoned… me… and didn’t get what he bargained for. But I sought you out specifically… why is that?” He uncoiled from his crosslegged position above my bed and stood over me, grabbing my face in his elegant looking hands. He was stronger than he looked. His face was flat, almost emotionless beyond his confusion. “Who -are- you!?”   
  
I blinked at that question. “Wh-what? I’m … I’m nobody. I’m a kid from California. I have a twin sister that everyone loves, the life of the party. The author of those maroon books? He was an amazing scientist… and his brother was the bravest, kindest, most industrious man I’ve ever met in my life. I’m not special; I don’t have any talents or skills that set me apart. All I w-wanted was to make up for my mistake, but I’ve only managed to … I don’t even know what I accomplished, you have some kind of fucked up amnesia... “    
  
“Mistake?”   
  
I ignored his words, I couldn’t stop talking, my eyes were full of tears I was trying to hold back. “I just w-wanted it to stop… You were chasing me, s-stalking me and I c-couldn’t take it anymore…” My eyes were wide as I forced myself not to blink. I would NOT cry in front of this monster. “I wanted you  _ dead! _ B-but instead I just e-ended up your slave.. J-just like F-Ford….” That did it. I pushed a hand into his stomach, trying to get him to free my face! But he wouldn’t let go, just watching me sob like an idiot, all over his damn hand.    
  
His face didn’t change. “I see,” was all he said. I refused to look him in the eyes, clenching my teeth shut in my misery. He let me go after a moment, then snapped his fingers. I flinched in horror, expecting something horrible to happen, but it was just kinda… a lightbulb moment snap. “Well, I don’t remember why I hated you, your family, none of that. Truce still holds,  _ Dipper _ .” He smiled a little; of course he knew my name, he’d read my journal. It was on the inside cover. I had the pine tree symbol tattooed on the back of my neck… kinda easy to figure that one out. “And if you fear me that much… isn’t it better to have me on your side than against you?” 

 

I blinked at him. What? “You expect me to trust you?”  _ Trust No One. _ __   
__   
He scoffed. “No, that’s an emotion.” He grabbed my wrist, forcing me to look at the triangle. “This is binding. The deal worked, you came out on top. That’s not trust, that’s called security. You think I’m all that? This powerful, evil … thing… that could have destroyed the world? Fine. Consider me your ace in the hole. You wanna go look at shit, right? So let’s go.” He turned me around, put my backpack on and gave me a little push…

 

One minute, I was in my bedroom, the next I was stumbling off the last step of my front porch. When I turned to yell at him, he was locking the door, then spun, tossed me the keys and slipped his hands in his pockets. “You missed a big one, by the way.”   
  
I was still sputtering from catching the fucking keys he threw at my face and trying to turn like a dog chasing it’s tail to put my keys away. “Missed. What.” I said, venom in every syllable.    
  
“A monster. I don’t remember much about this town specifically, just a few pieces around a few things you and … Ford … put down. It’s not coming back to me, just… events that I can see, as though someone else has told me about them. They’re not MY memories… just filled in gaps. It’s hard to explain. Anywho, one of those things I know is monsters. And there’s a big one. This way,” he said, smiling wide, setting off at an angle from the direction he'd been walking. 

 

I didn't want to be anywhere alone with this demon but out here seemed easier. I've always felt at home in the woods; Gravity Falls just had a lot of crazy creatures around. But instead of feeling trapped in the house, I felt I could breathe again. Completely in my head, of course, as being outside with him changed little other than my ability to run in a straighter line to get away, with the detriment of no doors…. Did doors stop this demon now? I wonder if I should look up some sort of warding enchantments, make myself a panic room, if you please - 

 

I ran into his back during my musings, then cursed myself. Idiot! Not bothering to look where we were going…! But I didn't need to, we were at the lake. 

 

Bill turned and raised an eyebrow at me but I dusted myself off like I didn't care. “You should have moved,” was my snooty retort. “And there's no monster here. Whatever latent memory you have from this place is mistaken… I'm sure Old Man McGucket is cackling in his grave that his animatronic fooled even you.” Smug. Self assured. Why did this demon make me feel so sure of myself? I hated him but … I always had such confidence face to face. Why was that?

 

His gold eyes took on a mean gleam, and his closed lipped smile widened before he whistled, sharp and loud. 

 

And I just stared. 


	5. Correct Me When I'm Wrong

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill's note: Hehehehe

“S-sweet Sagan… What… i-is that?” I’m quite ashamed to say I actually slipped behind the fucking demon, just now catching his ‘I’m on your side’ reassurance. He was right, with frenemies like him, who could hurt me? I wasn’t really -scared- just… the swirling and amount of bubbles coming from the lake was alarming. 

“If I’m right, and I’d like to think that I am,  _ that _ is what you’d call the Loch Ness monster… and if I am who I  _ think _ I am, then she’s one of mine.  _ Oi! Nessie! Come to daddy! _ ” He stepped away from me, an action I was no longer a fan of, and opened his arms just as the massive head broke the surface. 

Luminous green eyes opened slowly, underwater flora clinging to the lids. A hysterical bubble of laughter slipped from my mouth as I watched them blink, thinking idly that they looked a bit like lashes. “I-Isn’t the Loch… N-Ness monster… Scottish? In Scotland… wh-hnnoooh my GOD Bill!” I was literally shaking in my boots as he kept moving closer. I felt so exposed on the beach, trying not to be too obvious as I crept up behind him. Anything to avoid the monster’s piercing green gaze. 

Bill grinned and cooed at the massive, horrific thing. It snorted, spraying us with fetid lake-bottom water out of it’s 4 nostrils… then opened another set of eyes. “Nah, she migrates.  _ Hello there, pretty girl… who’s a sweetheart, hmm? _ ”    
  
The massive thing seemed to expand, a deafening noise like an intermittent foghorn bubbled from the direction of it’s mouth. I lunged forward the last foot and wrapped my arms around Bill’s waist on reflex, hiding my face against his back, babbling. “I swear I’ll do as you ask, a-anything, just please,  _ please  _ don’t f-feed me to it.”   
  
Bill froze with an almost mechanical shudder, then half turned in my arms to stare, before he gently ran a hand down the back of my neck. It was the strangest thing, being comforted by this demon… but it helped. I peeked over his shoulder at the thing while his fingers petted my hair at that awkward angle and he murmured gently “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t waste a perfectly good deal when she can fend for herself.”    
  
I turned my eyes up, too terrified to be offended, but he just smiled. Was he trying to tell a joke? Asshole. I blinked up at him, my eyes flicking to the freaky monster that had just scared the ever living shit out of me. It was unsettling to see something that I found scarier than Bill; but wasn’t that what he’d been doing? Showing me he wasn’t all that bad? Even before the botched deal. Too many questions… completely the wrong time to ask them. 

“... and besides, you’ll end up doing what I want regardless of your cute little plea there. Now c’mon, she won’t hurt you while I’m here. Go … look. Do your thing. You find this kinda crap interesting, yah? Monsters and what not.” 

That comment sparked an idea, but not a very concrete one. I’d have to think about that later. “Yeah… last time you brought me a monster, you slaughtered a pack of chimera in midair while they dive-bombed me. I’ll sketch from here. Thanks.” My tone was lacking it’s usual acidic quality but he just smiled and shrugged.

“Whatever floats your boat, kid.” He chuckled at his little joke - ooh he just thought he was so damn clever. He winked, then slipped out of my hold… I realized belatedly I’d been clinging to him for the entire conversation. He hummed as he skipped over to the monstrosity, a strange rumbling coming from her nostrils as he leaned over, crooning intelligibly and running his fingers into the muck on … her … nose? Noses. Whatever. 

I kinda just curled up into a cross-legged sit on the ground, thankful he’d left me kinda near one of the boulders on the beach and watched the two monsters interact. I snorted softly and shook my head, sketching idly. What had happened, exactly? How had his memories just gone? I tried to think about what I said…  _ “I want you to get rid of one more monster… You!”  _ I’d thought that would kill him, I’d been sure of it…! But it was all so simple. We thought … back after Weirdmagedon, we thought we’d killed him then too. Turns out Bill Cipher was a hard guy to get rid of. Still, he didn’t seem so bad now, once I’d gotten to… to…    
  
I paused in my thoughts, looking down at my sketchbook. Holy Hadron, I’d just drawn the blonde dickbag instead of the crazy fucking green thing. Shit. Y’know in the cartoons when the main character’s face turns so red his ears whistle? Pretty sure that happened, because Bill chose that moment to turn around and smile, looking almost delighted. “Get anything good?”    
  
“No,” I didn’t shout, but I had to project a bit more than I would like. “I can barely see the head, hard to get a good sketch from just eyes and nose slits. And no, I do  _ not _ want to see what tricks you can make it… her… do.” 

His eyes sparkled with humor, and I got the feeling he’d just have  _ loved _ showing me how the Loch Ness monster would roll over, speak, etc with a snap of his fingers. “She’s not as faithful as a dog, but she seems well behaved to me… as good as any loyal pet can be expected to behave.”    
  
I froze at that, then narrowed my eyes. Surely he wasn’t talking about me? “Well, th… thanks, I think, for showing me. That was… cool.” I didn’t like being proven wrong, but knowing there was a real monster hanging out in the lake? That was pretty awesome. 

He froze then, staring at me. I realized it was the first actually nice thing I’d said. “I … I actually dunno what to say to that... “ he frowned, looking uncomfortable. 

I quirked a smile and closed my journal with a snap. “Humans usually say ‘You’re welcome’, moron.”   
  
“You’re welcome, moron.”   
  
“Very funny.”    
  
“We aim to please,” he quipped, smirking and bowing a little. 

It made me blush, that formal streak he had. It made me think of the bowtie ...  and what else he might wear with a bowtie. My imagination must have been getting away with me because it looked like he was offering me his arm, but the illusion was gone in a second. I blinked, and he was still standing there looking at me. “What?” I sounded defensive and frustrated. Gah.    


“Nothin’. Shall we?” He turned (without offering me his arm) and began to stroll back towards the Shack. 

“Uh, what about your pet there?” I peeked back at the lake monster, taking a few steps closer to Bill.    
  
He gave me a sidelong glance, a slow smile exposing pointed teeth. “Scared?” His voice teased and he leaned into me, knocking his shoulder against mine.    
  
“No..! I just… someone could come along and … yknow…”    
  
He tossed his head back and laughed, throwing an arm over my shoulder and tucking me close to his side. “Such an altruist, Pine Tree. Fine.  _ Nessie! Go to sleep. _ ” He looked over his shoulder, inches from my face, glaring at the big monster until she retreated into the lake. When the last bubble faded, he looked at me, even closer now and asked softly “Better?”    
  
I froze for a second, then ducked out of his hold. “Yep. Yep that’s … that’s great. Thanks Bill. This way, right? Yeah I … I think it’s this way.” Did I sound flustered? Nervous? I was not. Neither! I was neither of those things. If anything, I was… terrified! Yeah, yeah the proper response to being centimeters away from kissing your mortal enemy and possible owner of your soul is terror. That was me to a T. T for… T for terror. 

He let me walk for a few moments, his arms folded over his chest, giving me space? Wha- dammit.    
  
“It’s the other way isn’t it.”    
  
“Yup.” 

Shit. I was so thoroughly screwed.


	6. Are you sure that stranger things have happened?!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Blonde? Check. Apron? Check. Cooking for the helpless bachelor who fails at taking care of himself otherwise? Check. Dreamboat status accepted.

I’m surprised I didn’t run all the way home. I had to play it cool, make sure I didn’t tip Bill off to anything, he needed to feel as though nothing changed. But seriously, _what is happening here?!_ I couldn’t reconcile the two warring compulsions within. One one hand, I hated Bill Cipher, everything he’d done to me, everything he stood for, everything he was capable of. Sure, this new and improved version was great, but he kept insisting that he owned me, my soul, whatever. But on the other…

I’d felt … a spark when he was that close to me, his face just an inch or two from mine. He was a bit taller than I was and just staring up at him like that…

There’s a reason I moved out of the house so early. Once we hit high school, Mabel’s boy-crazy tendencies kinda infected me as well. Nonono, not like her crazy boy-of-the-day thing, just… I … I’m gay! And after so many hours talking boys with her, her crushes and ‘to-do’ list, she kinda sorta figured me out. She promised she wouldn’t out me to mom and dad, but she’s not exactly the most reliable secret-keeper. She is, however, one of those ‘out of sight, out of mind’ people. If I left home, she wouldn’t think about me and my sexual preferences all that much, and my secret would be safe.

 _That does not excuse my stupid doe-eyed, Fifty Shades of Gold bullshit back there!_ What was I thinking, letting him get that close to me? I was just going to have to hole up, not talk to him, stay away. I had things to do in my room, a lot of research to copy over from my field notes, stuff I’d been ignoring. My bathroom was connected, I’d just stay in here. Sweat out this stupid obsession with the asshole and … yeah. I settled in for the long haul, losing myself in my work again. It was simpler to just think about my research, better to put the demon out of my mind…

Because when I wasn't working and thinking of other things, I kept imagining what it would have been like if he'd forced a kiss on me… and some twisted little part of me kept returning to that image. Why did it keep haunting me? Why couldn't I just forget about it?!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I made it through the night without sleeping. Thankfully, I had a lot of work with the manotaurs to catch up on. I'd helped them reunite with the females in their species over the summer and the ah fruits of our labors were … yeah there were a crap ton of little ones now in their camp. Apparently they're not manotaurs at all… _Minoterrus hominens,_ a sub species of the Greek minotaurs of legend, had bred with human females. The males were more set in their ways and possessed many of the minotaur’s typical qualities … like _bull headedness_ (frick I need to get out more, that was so lame I can't believe I actually just thought that). The females seemed to present more like Amazonian satyrs, and apparently had herded off the males for several consecutive mating seasons. Basically, they got fed up. Since they had failed at ‘helping me connect with my manly side’ they felt they could turn to me when they needed help ‘getting in touch with the women, and our feminine side’. While I was thrilled to see them again, it was also a bit of an insult at the time… but now I am welcomed at their gatherings, and the ladies have said my help has been invaluable. I'm less insulted by this, as I think they mean I have good manners and stuff. Its cool though, y’know? I’m no great scientist like Grunkle Ford was, no formal training, no PhDs to my name… I'm more of a … paranormal anthropologist, I guess. I like it!

Kinda makes sense, if I think about it that way, why Bill fascinates me so much, both now and when I was a kid. Ford would have said I was foolish but … if my deal with him can keep him in check, then he's just another paranormal entity to study and connect with, if you look at it in a slightly different angle… through your rose colored glasses… ugh. Who am I kiddi- ah shit. I'm thinking about him again! And what is that smell?

I cracked open the door and was assaulted with the overpowering smell of garlic. Whatever was being done to that garlic must be illegal or something, smelled so good it was a like a sin or a crime just to smell it! (Maybe I should stop letting Stan tell me his old man jokes; they're worse now that he lives in a nursing home.) Was… was Bill cooking?

Immediately I jumped to the idea of what could go wrong. The stove or oven breaking, the shack engulfed in flames… I nearly tripped over myself to get to the stairs in my stocking feet, clinging to the banisters as I scrambled down to the kitchen. I caught myself before I slammed into the door frame and saw … well.

Bill in a damned apron, manning two skillets. As I watched, he left the utensils to stir the contents on their own, like some shit out of Fantasia, as he leaned his elbows onto the counter, then propped his chin in his hands, smiling and like, wiggling? Dancing? It was so surreal. I watched him lick a long finger to turn the page, my head tilting a little to see his mouth… then mentally slapped myself. Sleep deprivation. Yes. That's all this was.

He noticed my physical reaction to my own repulsive thoughts, the blue eye flicking over to me before he straightened and smiled, looking me over before he smirked. “Thought so,” he said quietly before walking over to me, hands behind his back.

“Well, hello to you too… thought what?”

He plucked at a messy lock of hair on my head, flipping it back for me as he stepped closer. “I thought you stayed away all night… didn't feel you avoiding me with your self prescribed meds.”

“One of many hazards associated with living under threat of a dream demon,” I shot back, my salty disposition once more in place. Score. “What are you doing anyways?” I looked at the skillets skeptically. I've never been much of a cook. Probably because I've never been much for eating. I just get engrossed in things… a good book, a project, my research… I forget. I think I take after Ford in that way.

“Food, Pine Tree. This… is food.”

“Yeah but what is it?”

He leaned over the cookbooks, running his finger over the page delicately. “Venison tenderloin medallions over…” other cookbook, “Parmesan polenta, served with an onion au jus.” He smiled back at me, clearly expecting me to be impressed.

And I was, truly, deeply impressed (and a little flattered somewhere over my inner rainbow) that he'd cooked for me, but the first words out of my lips were “I didn't have venison…”

His face fell a tiny bit, and he returned to stirring his skillets. “How d’yah figure that?” Was… was he sulking? Seriously?

“Um, I've never bought venison in my life… wait… _venison?”_

“Buy it? You live in a big ass forest in Oregon… why on earth would you buy it?”

It was then that I noticed he had a few brown specs on his face … and little streaks in his hair… which was sticking up like he'd finger combed it. “What's the … reddish brown? Einstein's earwax, did you … did you _butcher_ a deer last night?!”

“I didn't do it in the house… and I thought I got all the blood. Sorry about that, Dip… my mistake.” I think he was trying to look sheepish but he just looked terrifying, looking at me from under his lashes. That scar was freaking me out now.

I tried to muster up more fear about this, tried to feel some sort of terror and indignation, but all I could think about was how much trouble he must have gone through… and that I didn’t really want to know where he’d butchered my breakfast. “I had food in the house, y’know. You could have just made that if you...wanted to cook.”  
  
“Oh you mean, the 26 boxes of the same thing that had almost identical flavors? Yeah, tried them all. You actually eat that crap?”  
  
“Well, yeah. Mac and cheese… hey if you made them all, what did you do with it?”  
  
“Fed it to the remaining deer.”

“.... that's just..  why?”

“To console them. They just lost a herd member!” He affected a wounded look. “I'm not _that_ cold hearted.”

 _But he would have been before._ What was the word for this in a demon? Remorse? Empathy? “Sooooo are you any good?”

“Hmm?”

“At cooking.”

“Oh! No idea. You're about to find out!” he smiled as he slipped a plate onto the table. Just one. Didn't ask, didn't want to know.

My eyes widened at the first bite. I have no idea what he did to this deer before or after its death, but it tasted amazing. “Mm! ‘is’s …” I had to swallow, rude, “This is really good!” I dug in, trying hard not to moan.

He grinned, looking pretty pleased. “I'd like to cook more, seems kinda fun… light stuff on fire, change the chemical makeup of the organism, all for the sake of taste! Fascinating creatures…” He trailed off, mumbling a little  


“Deer?” It was hard to focus while eating food this good.

“Of course not. Humans!”

I was too busy having a mouthgasm to care if he insulted me. “Mmm,” was all I could manage in noncommittal assent. “I gotta take you grocery shopping…”

Bill had a smug smile on his face. It made me self conscious.

“Whaaaat?”

“They said the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach… guess they were right.”

“They?” Skepticism.

“The internet.

Jumpin’ Joule’s ghost, Bill Cipher had discovered the internet

  
I was basically having my last meal; he was going to be the death of me.


	7. Close Quarters

Turns out Bill didn’t know much about  _ cleaning _ but I figured that was fair enough. He’d cooked for me, so I showed him how to clean stuff, what a dishwasher was. It was all like some kind of weird dream, some fucked up, domestic nightmare. I had a  _ demon _ in my house and here I was, scrubbing skillets. 

 

He kept standing too close, clearly taking ‘over the shoulder’ seriously, which, again, is explainable. I should have minded more but really, if I was brutally, painfully, horribly honest with myself…

 

I was lonely. Ford had disappeared two years ago, and after Stan retired, there wasn’t much of an onus to keep the Shack open all the time. We had events, and locals would rent some of the creepier rooms for scary sleepovers and stuff. I made sure we were open for the roadtrip seasons, but during the winter? Soos and Melody were off with their life, they had two kids now and they were always really busy. All the people my age that I knew when I was a kid were gone, off to college; and when they came back, they still saw the awkward outsider I’d been, even knowing what the Pines had done for the town. I just… didn’t have anyone to talk to. 

 

My scrubbing ground to a halt, and I hung my head a bit. No wonder he was worming his way into my head so fast, even without letting him in my dreams. I was like a lamb to slaughter. Isolation had prepared me, primed me for this very moment. Take everything away from the hero, then give him a companion with laser-like focus, attuned to every need. This version of Bill was even my type, adventurous, carefree, the flippant dismissal of everything but himself… and me… I thought of the way I felt confident around him and suddenly felt sick. Fuck… what kind of sick script was I a part of? This wasn’t some demon hunter movie, this was like… like… a disgusting rom com! He was even b-bossy… I liked bossy boys, they … I … making decisions can be hard. 

 

I shook myself, dropped the damn skillet in the sink and turned the other way to get out of his space. “Should have it figured out by now,” I said flippantly as I stomped off… I paused for one moment, half turning and nearly whispered “Thanks, that was … really good.”  

 

I didn’t stay around for the wounded look. This stupid crush had gone on long enough! That’s what it was; I had a damned crush on this ‘new and improved’ version of Bill Fucking Cipher and it was unacceptable! I would never be  _ that _ lonely. Never! I stomped all they way to my room. I had to get out of here, get into the forest.    
  
He was hovering, following me, and I could hear some kind of emotion in his voice. “What are you planning?”   
  
“I just have to go out. I have stuff to do.” I slammed the door to my bedroom in his face and panted a little as I staggered to the desk. I’d taken out Mabel’s bed, put in a desk I’d found, and moved one of the doubles up to my room now that I was living alone. It wasn’t so bad, better than staring across the room at an empty bed that had been occupied your entire life. 

 

I shoved things in my backpack, my mind reeling. I had a headache, my insides felt cold but I felt feverish on the outside, like I was trying to keep the shakes inside my body. Sleep deprivation isn’t hard to identify, almost as familiar as the usual anxious nausea I seem to chronically suffer from.    
  
“Where you goin’?” His smooth voice came from behind me, from around my bed, and I bit into my lip to hold in the shriek. I didn’t look at him, couldn’t look at him. I didn’t WANT this, hated what I was feeling, hated myself.    
  
“Manotaur camp. They… I go study the little ones every week to see their growth patterns. I wanna know if they’re a stable species despite obvious anatomical differences between the genders, or if there is s-some kind of genetic drift occurring with every generation.” I stuttered as i felt him come up behind me, hunching my shoulders as his breath tickled my neck. “Please, they … they don’t like outsiders. You’d just interfere and this project is i-important to me. I … I’ll be safe, I promise.” I slid to the side to keep from being trapped against the desk when I turned and smiled weakly. “Besides, you’d know if I was in danger, r-right?” I gulped when I got a look at his face. He was studying me, a very intense, focused gaze raking over me as I tried to keep from literally shivering under his gaze. “I’ll be back before sunset, I swear.”

 

“Mmm,” was all I got in return, and I slowly put one foot behind the other, backing away to the door I’d closed, throwing it open and bolting down the stairs. I pretended I didn’t hear the second part, his whisper like a whip crack: “You’d better be.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I couldn’t breathe again until I got outside, but as badly as I wanted to, I couldn’t sit there and gasp for breath. It was stifling in that house, under his gaze, he was terrifying even when he was well behaved and it was just too much. I could feel his eyes on me again; but at least this time he only had two, and I knew where they were. I chanced a glance back at the house to see him looking out of my window. I forced a smile over my features, trying not to look as sick as I felt and waved a little. 

 

When I crossed the tree line, I couldn’t even keep the brisk pace I’d set. I was truly exhausted. I hadn’t done much moving so I hadn’t noticed just how bone tired I was. I shook myself, tucked my bangs into my hat to get them out of my eyes. (PS, why was I sweating again? What was going on with my body lately? I hadn’t done this since puberty, what the hell?) 

 

I set off, trying for a light jog. I’d seen Ford do this, excite the endorphins in the blood with exercise to boost his energy. It sort of helped, and the increased blood flow helped my headache. Now if only it would calm my wayward thoughts. I didn’t like him being that close to me, it was like an awareness, a thousand little legs crawling over my skin. I felt it more when I was tired but it’d been there all along. I’d always thought it was fear or nerves or something but now I wasn’t so sure. 

 

Suddenly my feet tangled in something and I went flying, face first into a tr-!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill: That boy sure enjoys knocking himself silly!  
> Dipper: Fuck you.   
> Bill: I'm so insulted. Truly, you wound me, Pine Tree.   
> Dipper: *muttering* Ass.   
> Bill: Anything else to add, you salty little shit?  
> Dipper: *walked off, ignoring me.*
> 
> This just happened in real life. Thought y'all would enjoy.


	8. Disassembled

_I popped my head up when I felt it. What had been a tenuous connection before was now an open highway. He must be asleep; wait, in the forest? Why? Shadow stepping wasn’t that hard, even when I had to disassemble my physical form every time._

 

_I don’t think anyone realizes just how painful it is to lose everything about yourself until it happens. Sure, this kid had told me about who I was, but I couldn’t remember any of those things, couldn’t jconnect with any of those memories. It was jarring in a way I can’t describe. He was the only connection that I had, yet he pulled away at every opportunity, every chance he had to run away. I realize that I make him uncomfortable but I have Nothing Else to go on; English is such a piss poor medium to convey things he doesn’t even want to talk about to begin with._

 

_I found him less than thirty paces from the treeline, nearly wrapped around a tree, his nose broken, blood running down his face. A huff escaped me, I shook my head and frowned, but I didn’t even know why. I had emotions, compulsions, reactions I didn’t even understand around this kid and it was impossible to untangle them. I didn’t even have proper words to associate with these … emotions. It was like they’d been leached away with the rest of my memories, whatever frame of reference I’d had before they were gone._

 

_I threaded my fingers into his hair and pulled his face away from the tree, an involuntary wince flickering through me at the sight of his mangled face. That would hurt a human, might even hurt me. I let him fall back on his back, his head lolling to the side slowly as I tilted my head for a better angle of his face. Just a peek, just a little taste… I slipped into his mind as easily as a clear lake, shivering with some foreign sensation: Familiarity. I’d been here before! How??_

 

_My presence made him whimper, his contorting face aggravating the broken nose. I stroked a finger down between his eyes, down the bridge, fixing the bone as I prowled gently just outside his consciousness, hoping the relief of his pain in the flesh would calm his mind. Sinking into his panicked brain would be like tearing through his normal defenses; they were already in tatters. I stroked the ruined fibers of the web gently, giving them a little more life._

 

 _The protection around a mind was almost like a spider’s web. You could press against the layers to get a peek between them, you could slip between the little gaps (which was considerably more difficult)... or you could simply tear your way to the core. The third option had certainly happened to this boy, and when I raised a hand to try and repair another section, I drew back my hand immediately, feeling… ill. The clawed hand I saw, my own hand, fit the rips and tears exactly. I stared around at the carnage, the damage that would take so very long to repair… and swallowed back my rising gorge._ I _had done this? Why?? What on earth…_

 

_I steeled myself, pressing forward. I was desperate for answers, and if I fixed the damage first, I’d never get them. I used enough energy to seal up the gaping wounds I found, but I didn’t fix anything else._

 

_Everything was black and white. I could feel the space around me turning, yielding, focusing on my presence. What made this place Dipper was cowering, a kind of resigned submission. I laid a hand on the wall, frowning. I’d really done a number on this place. As much as I sensed him recoil, I felt a deeper emotion, almost like loss._

 

 _There was a pit in the floor, a badly covered vortex of pain and fear. The trapdoor keeping it closed was cracked in so many places, repairs over it in twice that amount. Anyone daring to come even close would be sucked in. It was hard to read the word written on it with all the boards… but I could almost make out a few letters. I looked around for the way to the next level. Needed a better vantage point to get a better look… Eventually I found I could just hover over it:_ W  IFDMAGLD N _…. Well, some of the boards were placed right in the characters. From what I’d read, that was most likely Weirdmagedon. I threw a bubble over the hole, in case it blew open while I was looking and gently pried back one of the boards. I was dismayed to find more claw marks… My work. My doing. And I saw everything._

 

_I fell back from the portal, panting hard. I felt my mouth fill with blood; I’d bitten my own tongue. That… that was me?! Fuck… no wonder he hated me. No wonder. I raced through the information again, idly tacking the board back down over the hole I’d made and dismayed that I couldn’t really help him any more than that._

 

 _I wrapped my arms tighter around my knees as I shrunk into a corner of his mindscape, my body mimicking the action… or so I thought. What had happened that would cause anyone to do all that? Why … how...._ _  
_ _  
_ _And then I wasn’t alone. Dipper stirred in my arms in the physical world, I’d been hugging him instead. My vision was split between the boy’s inner workings and the outside world._ _  
_ _  
_ _“B-Bill…? What are you… H-hey!” He flailed against me and I tightened my arms in reflex, oblivious to the batting hands when the kid panicked. I could do little more than stare._ _  
_ _  
_ _“I’m so … sorry…”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD, DEMON! I should never have trusted you, never have -”_ _  
_   
“I fixed your nose,” my voice sounded flat, and everything felt numb.

 

_“What the fuck are you talking about?!” Every word was spat at me, anger flashing in tear-filled eyes. Soft brown eyes. Something about them…_

 

_“You broke it. On a tree. I came to find you and I … wanted to know what happened … I’m … sorry.” I curled around him, pulling him closer and he froze in my arms, most likely mortified. I was a monster. A monster. I’d destroyed his life and the resilient little darling was relatively collected as I cradled him like a moron on the forest floor._

 

 _His arms slowly came up and one looped awkwardly around my back, the other resting along my leg which was half under him… He’d ended up in my lap. “You … you feel broken. Different.”_ _  
_   
“I do?” I realized he was looking at me in the mindscape too, and awake to boot. His footsteps neared me and my inner self recoiled … what the hell was this emotio-

 

 _“Are you… ashamed?!” He seemed incredulous, almost unable to believe my reaction. I ducked my head back into my legs/his neck and didn’t answer him. In the mindscape, he pulled my face up to look at him again. “What did this deal do to you?”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“I don’t know!” I nearly wailed, flinging myself out of his head and leaving a wake of blue flames to help rebuild all the webs behind me. When I felt wholly in the physical world, the loss of his mind connected with mine was crushing, painful… agonizing. “I don’t… know.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“I … twisted my ankle. But! You don’t… have to fix it right now. You seem low on juice. Just… help me up maybe?”_ _  
_ _  
_ _I did better than that. I just gathered the kid into my arms and stood while holding him, peeking down at his ankle. I felt numb, twisted up inside. He nudged me and I looked back at him slowly._ _  
_   
“Home? I … I need sleep. I’ll go see the manotaurs tomorrow. Come on… Take me… home.” He looked concerned. About me. I didn’t deserve it, at all.

 

 _“Sure thing,” I said, trying to muster my usual smirk as I stepped from where we were straight into his bedroom. I laid him gently on his bed, standing awkwardly next to him and shoved my hands in my pockets. “I’ll… fix the ankle in the morning. You’re right, I should… recharge… something… I … I’ll let you sleep.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“Don’t…” his face was worried, concerned… for me? “I … I don’t want you alone in the house right now. Stay. I … It’ll make me feel safer.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _“How can you feel safe … with me…” I just stared as he wiggled out of his jeans, then stripped off the flannel and scooted against the wall._ _  
_ _  
_ _“Maybe I’ve finally cracked. C’mon, I want to keep an eye on you, you look… I dunno… sick or something.”_ _  
_ _  
_ _I followed his lead, snapping to darken the window so he could sleep, then slipped into bed after forming whatever he had covering his groin as well. I slipped into bed next to him with a slight smile and tried not to flinch when he scooted closer._ _  
_   
It would be good for him to sleep, I thought to myself, letting him arrange my limbs to his liking. He ended up with his head on my arm, looking at me through drooping eyelids. I’d just watch over him while he s… slep-


	9. Blurring the Lines

 

Waking up was a surreal experience. I still had some aches and pains, but nothing terrible. My head felt … fuzzy but overall it was a little more stable in there. Light filtered through the spell that Bill had put on the window before we - yeesh… I'd forgotten… Bill.

 

I was facing the wall, curled up like usual but my back was pressed against his. Having another body in my bed was a new experience for me; based on the co-occupant, I wasn't sure how I felt about it. His breathing was slow and heavy, the lightest hint of a snore on the end. I was incredulous, I had no idea he slept.

 

I needed to pee, dammit, but didn't have the guts to wake him… when I rolled over, I no longer had the intention to either.

 

He had these crazy tattoos, all over his back. They curled over his biceps too and I strained to remember if I'd seen them when I woke up after the deal… I suppose I'd been seriously distracted then. Some were recognizable, like Cerberus, the pet of Hades and sometimes Pluto (I could only see a little of that one but its hard to miss a three headed dog), an ahnk from ancient Egypt, and on that subject, perhaps the dog on his other shoulder might be a jackal, or even Anubis? Hard to make out the difference as it curved over his shoulder and arm in the low light.

 

The largest was something I'd never seen before, and spanned his shoulder blades, a small whirl curling around his upper spine and bold, wiggling lines… I wanted to draw it, try to find a match for whatever it was. Maybe it would tell me about what kind of demon he really was! Whether the information would be harmful or beneficial to him… I'd keep my research to myself.

 

There were a few more markings, some staves crossing the ahnk, perhaps? And of course, a triangle. I smiled despite myself and reached for him, gently tracing a fingertip along the thin line. I sighed softly. What were we going to do?!

 

 

_His touch was feather light in the cool morning. The soft embrace of sheets slipped over my skin as he shifted behind me. He had such nimble fingers, my beloved human pet. My liquid smile slid across my face as I rolled onto my stomach, turning slowly to face him…_

 

 _And the vision cleared, leaving me with the ashes of a memory I knew I had. My mouth felt like I'd just slept with sand in it and I panted for air in frustration as I tried to get it back. No._ NO! _Bring it back… I wanted that vision back._

 

_But the boy in the bed just looked at me funny and said skeptically “Um, Bill? Are you ok? You still look kinda weir-”_

 

_“I remembered something.”_

 

_That had him sitting up straight. “Really? Uh, what did you… remember?”_

 

_“Nothing like you'd seen of me… this was new. Something… different.”_

 

_“Oh,” he seemed stumped by that answer. “Good or bad?”_

 

_“Huh?”_

 

_“Was the thing you saw good… or bad?”  He propped himself up to look at me now, curiosity evident on his face._

 

_“I didn't really see anything. It … it was more like a feeling. Like a sensation. When you touched me.”_

 

_His blush suited him, and a part of me I couldn't really identify was really enjoying its emergence. “Oh! Heh, you felt that huh. S-sorry, you uh, had a hair stuck to your back.” I knew I didn't. “I was just gettin’ it for yah.”_

 

_I raised an eyebrow but didn't call him on his lie. “I see. Well, thank you.”_

 

_“No problem. Hey, I gotta get up now, can you like… move?”_

 

_“Why do you have to get up?”_

 

_“It's a human thing, you wouldn't understand.”_

 

_Hmm. “Fine.” I rolled off for him and offered him a hand. “Your ankle,” I explained._

 

_He brushed my hand away resolutely and clambered out of the bed. “I appreciate the offer but I've rolled my ankle bef-ah…!”_

  


 

No fucking way. Two days ago I'd been batting my eyelashes at him, then I went all damsel on him yesterday, remedied only by the small amount of fussing I'd been able to do while he was carrying me.. and now, like a damned princess, I just face planted into his chest. What is this, a Disney movie?

 

He caught me easily, of course, though it was a little awkward and only managed to press my face harder against him. What the actual hell was going on. Was the universe against me? It was like some sick pervert was _trying_ to get Bill and me together. Gross.

 

I sighed. “Ok, you win…” my voice had a distinct nasal quality to it. “I need help.”

 

“Thought you'd never ask.”

 

I was actually a little disappointed in him there. “Whaaaat? No witty comeback, siting the fragility of my mental health?”

 

I thought he'd laugh, lighten up a bit, anything to wipe that look off his face. It was so … guilty. “No, I … I'm fairly certain I caused most of that. Seems particularly churlish of me to throw in your face again, don't you think?” His voice was soft, pensive, unlike him.

 

I kicked my feet a little, almost wishing my sister was here to say ‘AWKWARD’ for me, but I had to push through this on my own. I shoved his shoulder a little to snap him out of it, then tried a smile myself. “You gonna sulk forever or make it up to me?”

 

He sputtered a little at that as he gently placed me near the door. “You… what?!”

 

“Yeah, I distinctly remember you saying you wanted to cook for me, remember?” As if on cue, my stomach growled. Well, it had been growling for a bit but that one was loud and _really_ obnoxious. “Hungry human here. While you work on that, I smell like blood and demon, so I'm gonna shower.” I wrinkled my nose,then shut the door in his face. “Impress me…!” _You can lead a horse to water…._

  
I didn't hear anything for a moment, then muttering on the other side of the door. Must have been bad, because it was a language that sounded completely different from anything I'd ever heard. The grumbling trailed away down the hall towards the stairs. I smiled and felt like high fiving the mirror. Mission accomplished.


	10. Unstoppable Force

_Impertinent. Demanding. Owning a human was apparently more work than pleasure but I suppose that's the way of pets; besides, how could I get him to trust me if he felt threatened?_

_Cooking wasn't hard, almost relaxing in its monotony, giving me time to piece together what I'd seen. While I knew that Dipper wasn’t impressed, I was certainly confused by my former self’s restraint. When faced with destruction, surely the best course of action would be to destroy the circle once they’d been assembled. And they’d all been right there! At the very least, turn them all into tapestries? If the only way to destroy me was their mutual cooperation, then what was the point of leaving even one of them out? It just didn’t make sense. And the only person I’d actually threatened to kill? A little girl, who I had previously imprisoned and had ample opportunities to kill during that time. Surely if I’d planned on killing her, or anyone really, I would have done so when I had the upper hand._

_A bluff? A ruse, perhaps. But why? What was the point? What did this Ford have in his head that I’d needed? An equation to get out of this town? Ok, that I suppose I can see, but the barrier itself was more interesting. Weirdness? More than likely it was a force field created by the spacecraft that had landed here, and in the form I was working with before, that much energy could potentially have been seen as… what. A power source? Perhaps the ship was attempting to repair itself and prevented the most energy-dense thing it could find from leaving._

_It’s likely that ol’ Sixer had figured that out and had also learned how to turn off the forcefie- wait, why did I just call him that?_  
  
_Another spark of memory, just a flash, as though I could see multiple polydactyl humans through time. The feeling was tainted, sometimes with disinterest, sometimes with flat out hatred. Finally I thought of the journal and my hand clenched tight enough to crack the wooden spoon I was holding._

 _I can’t tell if he was already nearby or if he’d come down after a few minutes but suddenly the boy, my boy, was at my elbow, snapping his fingers in my face. “Bill? You in there? Helloooooo…”_  
  
_I turned and looked at him as we both struggled to maintain composure. I didn’t want him to see how much all of this was troubling me.  He was worried and didn’t want to care, didn’t want to be concerned for my well being after what I’d done to him and his family._

 _He was still a little sleepy, and he kept thinking about my tatto- what? “Tattoos? I have tattoos?”_  
  
_He scrambled back like he’d been burned. “What? How?”_  
  
_“I’m sorry! Sorry I... “ I pulled away, trying to step back and keep from peeking into the little spaces of the healing webs. “Your mind is really soothing… I’ve been there before and it feels …” I trailed off, knowing he was fighting revulsion when I said that._

 _He didn’t let me off the hook though. “It feels… what.”_  
  
_“Familiar.” When he rolled his eyes, I dug in, trying to find a better way to say it. “Nothing feels that way to me. Everything else has been ripped away from me. I’m sorry, I had… no right to pry.”_

_He held on to his angry look a little longer, then sighed, resigned. “You weren’t exactly prying, I guess, they’re you’re damn tattoos. That done?” He pointed to the stove and we turned, revealing I’d never turned it on._

_I blinked. “Huh. Sorry,” I smiled sheepishly at him, and he rolled his eyes at me and smiled despite himself._

_“That’ll keep. C’mon… let’s find you a mirror.”_

_His hand around my wrist was like being electrocuted as he dragged me with him to the nearest mirror, then turned me to face him and not the mirror. I raised an eyebrow when he started on the buttons, very matter of fact. He flicked his eyes up to look at me, then blushed hard and stuttered a little. “They’re on your back…! I saw them this morning, and if you don’t mind I want a picture too. I’m going to - “_  
  
_“Research them?” I smirked down at him, not bothering to help._

_He looked back up at me glaring this time, but didn’t otherwise answer. When the shirt fell away, I twisted, staring at the markings on my skin._

_“Where… did they come from?”_  
  
_“No idea. I’m hoping they’re some sort of hints for your origins, Bill. We’ve always just assumed you were some kind of demon, and that we understood but... “ He pointed to one shoulder, and I craned to look at it. “That three headed dog is part of Greco-Roman mythology. This symbol here is -definitely- Egyptian in origin,” he went on, pointing to the loop on my low back and tracing it with his finger, “And if I’m right, this over here might be Anubis. They were all gods of the underworld; maybe you had something to do with them? Like … some kind of harbinger or … knight or something.” He shrugged, but I could tell he was excited._

 _Staring at the symbols didn’t help me. What had helped was him touching me, them. And he hadn’t addressed… “Any idea what the massive one is?”_  
  
_He leaned on the counter in the bathroom as I looked over my shoulder, trying to see better. His little pocket notebook was in his hand in seconds, tapping on the copy he’d drawn, checking it with the original on my skin. “I’m truly not sure, I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s not anything western, doesn’t look to be from Asia, though there are many different sources there? Maybe… I dunno. African? South American? Hell, it could be Icelandic for all I know.” He slipped the end of the pen in his mouth and sucked on it a little bit, thinking hard._  
  
_He was so close, so very close to me like this. Every real memory, every hint of recollection had been associated with a touch of some kind. He looked up then, and blushed hard. A thought skittered through his head, an image of my face brushing against his… no, my lips… “... Ok,” I breathed back, cupped his face and repeated the image exactly. His lips were soft and warm towards the center, but the edges were a little cracked and rough - ‘chapped’ was the word his mind supplied as I noticed this._

_Closed mouth, breathe through the nose… slowly turning, pinning him to the vanity behind him. Our heads tilted a little, brushing noses. He let out a soft noise and my hands dropped to the sink, holding onto the marble to keep from grabbing him, because:_

_I could feel him panicking, and not over what I’d expected. He wasn’t shocked that I’d kissed him… He was upset at how much he liked it. He wanted this and it made him angry, disgusted with himself._

_Well fuck. I broke off the kiss with a start and a deep intake of breath, stumbling back to the door. “Sorry. I … food. Cooking.” I snapped, retrieving my shirt from his hands and strode to the kitchen, cursing. Of course he loathed anything to do with me. I could almost feel him sinking to the floor, curling up to try and rationalize that. After I cooked, I’d just have to get out of his hair. Feeling his revulsion while the pieces of my shattered puzzle rearranged was agony._

  
_I wish he didn’t make me feel so … alive._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill's tattoos!: http://itssinwithagrin.tumblr.com/post/155860054417/petpolaris-itssinwithagrin-when-they-knew-when  
> Kisses!: http://petpolaris.tumblr.com/post/146930513564/aurum-and-aster


	11. Immovable Object

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life isn't always tentacles and soul selling, Bill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill: Now we're getting somewhere! Eeeeeeeeeee! If you haven't checked things out from the end of last chapter, here they are again! 
> 
> Bill's tattoos!: http://itssinwithagrin.tumblr.com/post/155860054417/petpolaris-itssinwithagrin-when-they-knew-when  
> Kisses!: http://petpolaris.tumblr.com/post/146930513564/aurum-and-aster
> 
> We should have clarified: Pet Polaris = LHG aka 'Dipper'

I…. He actually kissed me. I'd just thought of it, what it would feel like for him to kiss me. And he'd just said ‘Ok’ and gone for it. What it must feel like to just do the first thing you thought of … well, I thought of I suppose. A shaky hand raised slowly to touch my lips, disbelieving.

I wonder why he left. I had just started to get over the shock too. I knew this was wrong. An insult to the hardship my family had endured at the hands of this demon, but he was different now. He had never forced himself on me. Not even the deal. That had technically been my idea, down to the terms.

But he couldn’t just do things I thought of on a whim! I might be asking for things with my thoughts or body language, but thinking them was not permission. He needed to know that.

What else. I felt so drawn to him, so very enthralled. I could no longer envision the days before Bill Cipher before he changed my life and now I was finding that wasn't a bad thing. Is this how Ford felt when he was in the throes of Bill's possessions and possessiveness? I felt so disconnected from the world; like I was cooped up here alone, just me and my demon boyfrie-

I was in way over my head if I'd gotten that far into the word. Alright, fine. Does this withstand the test of its natural environment? Or is it only possible in a test tube? It was time to take this outside. _Hubble help me, what am I_ _doing with my life?_

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Ok ok ok. Ok. I paced in the bathroom, thinking, then stopped and tried again, delivering my speech to the mirror. “Bill. I… I don't quite know where to start with that, I haven't really had time to process what happened back there, but I think we should clear something up. While I acknowledge that it is difficult for you to avoid seeing things in my mind, that does not give you automatic permission to do them. Wait is that too angry I think I sound kinda angry there…”

“Am I allowed to join this conversation yet?” his muffled voice was on the other side of the door and I pinched the bridge of my nose. “If yes, sounds fair to me and you sound an appropriate level of affronted after that. If no, food's ready, lemme know when you finish your conversation practice.”

I opened the door sheepishly and smiled up at him. “I used to have Mabel to practice on… bad habit. Sorry.”

“Well I think you're much prettier. Was that the extent of it then? Or was there… more?”

Discretionary fishing! I liked it! “Oh, there's more, believe you me, but I don't think I will last another moment without sustenance…!” Playing it off should be on my resume. “We can talk over food, yeah?”  
  
His stomach growled really loudly and he stared down at himself in horror. It was _hilarious._

“Maybe you should try food too? C’monnnnn…” I walked backwards a little, then turned to head downstairs. We should go do something. My first inclination was to take him out with me into the woods, but that was still in our little bubble, isolated from the world. Where could we go that we could spend time together but not … be… _together_.

When I got to the table, that answer came to me. “Mashed potatoes?”   
  
“Fully loaded,” he said proudly. And boy were they, based on the amount of pots and bowl’s he’d used to make this.   
  
I chuckled and slipped over to the counter, shaking my head. “Usually, you eat them with something else, Bill.”   
  
“But…! They have meat in them! Bacon is composed of nitrogen based compounds, you call them proteins. I looked! Protein is requi-”   
  
“Yes, it is. Very good. But they mean more than a couple crumbles.”   
  
“But the internet…!”   
  
“We’re goin shopping. And I want you to try real food yourself.” I hesitated, because I knew one sure fire way to get him to come with was … with a sigh, I shrugged on my coat then held out my bare hand. “It’ll be good, you’ll see.” I tried for a reassuring smile and he stared at my hand.

I could see him holding his breath as he twined his fingers with mine, then a shiver ran through him. Why did my touch affect him so much? It didn’t seem to be anything weird or perverted. I chalked it up to ‘think about later’ and dragged him to the STNLYMBL, fought with the clutch for a moment before we were off.

I peeked over, watching him rub his stomach, frowning down at himself. “Detour?”   
  
He shrugged, suddenly quiet. As I thought, it was harder when he wasn’t just around me alone, but he seemed almost like he was paying more attention than nervous… When he suddenly gave me a knowing smirk, I turned right back to the road. Fine, I just wouldn’t think about him!   
  
His huff of laughter as he lounged in his seat was testament to how much he believed that last statement. I thought _really_ hard about anything else, kittens, Mabel’s monstrous fashion trends, my research into Gravity Fall’s phenomena, aaaand right back to Bill. I chanced a peek at him to watch him trying to school his face away from a smile.

Suddenly, his smooth, easy voice was in my mind, sounding like he was just next to my ear. _Aren’t I allowed to be flattered, Pine Tree?_ He sounded it, and more than a little smug.   
  
I parked more abruptly than I should have in the old car and tossed myself out of the door. “We’re here.” My turn to smirk now; he’d been so busy smirking about my distraction that he hadn’t figured out where we were going. We stood outside Lazy Susan’s Diner. I grinned at him, excited for her pancakes. I couldn’t finish a full stack still, even at 19. Looking Bill up and down, I wasn’t sure how much he’d eat. We’d play it by ear.   
  
He was close on my heels the entire walk to the place, peering over my shoulder with an almost nervous glance around. When I slipped into a booth, he just followed me onto the bench seat. I was about to say something when Lazy Susan came over and handed us menus, exclaiming in her grating voice. “Dipper Piiines! I forgot you still lived heeeere! Oh and you brought someone! To my Diner! That’s so flattering! I’ll get you two some waters while you think about your life choices.” She was smiling the whole time she spat that at us too loudly.

Bill was ramrod in his seat, looking like a cross between violated, scarred for life and an electrocuted cat. “You are telling me. This is the town you were fighting to save?” His clenched teeth and pallor were kinda funny.   
  
“Relax, seriously, it’ll be fine. Just … breathe, ok? I’ll order what I always get and if you’re still hungry we’ll get something else.”   
  
“You two done thinkin’ yet?” Bill visibly flinched when she spoke again. Her voice really was painful to listen to, even more gravel than it used to be when I was a kid.   
  
“One order of pancakes, and we’ll both have a Pitt, please. You liked that before, I think,” my voice died as I realized he wasn’t laughing along. “That’s all for now; I’ll keep a menu. “Thanks, Lazy Susan.”   
  
“FULL STACK AND A PAIR OF PITTS, FRANK. That’ll be right out sweeties. Wink!” She picked up her creepy dead eyelid to do it again, and Bill’s face twitched. I clamped a hand on his knee to keep him from leaping at her or something. His hand was creeping alarmingly close to the knife on the table.   
  
“No. _No…_ No! Bill, leave the knife. You can’t just… no. You wanna … I don’t know what you wanna do with me, other than ownmeorwhatever yes yes! I got that. But I live in the _real world_ Bill and if you want to be around me, you need to live here in the real world with me. So this, _sir_ , is lesson one. Got it?” I hissed all this under my breath as he calmed under my fingers, trying not to be too obvious about dragging in lung fulls of air. I flinched when his hand clasped mine back suddenly, his fingers threading into mine.

I’d meant to calm him, but his hand in mine helped me just as much, I think. That actually made him smile. He was kinda cute when he smiled, the blonde thing was working in his favor too. I wouldn’t throw myself at him, I couldn’t. But he’d come away from this deal embodying almost everything I’d wanted anyways, and if he could join me where I was, maybe this wouldn’t be a trainwreck.


	12. Inevitable Collide

He was whining. “Can we go home now?” 

“No. We have to get groceries.” I was feeling pretty good about our progress today, pleased that we’d managed to have a meal and be decent to one another for almost 2 hours. I sighed in frustration. Baby steps, right? 

I was, in fact, fighting my own anxiety. I have never really felt comfortable in large groups unless I’m certain that I’ll go unnoticed but people in Gravity Falls weren’t very good at that. I’d been the oddball, the outsider, and then part of the core group of heroes to the town; they might not want to talk about it, but they all knew who I was. 

“Good to see yah, Dipper!” “We’ll be up next week to the old haunt!” “How’re Stan and Ford doing?”

Yes, good, they’re just fine thank you. Expected answers, murmured from under my hat, able to feel the contemplative looks about the tall punk looking blonde at my side. He was new and new was not normal around here. Old Toby marrying his first woodpecker wife? Normal, expected, why-didn’t-he-marry-her-weeks-ago. But some new blonde in town? I was surprised there wasn’t a pile up of carts from all the gawking.

“What are they staring at?” he finally leaned over and asked me. He had been creeping close to me, his arm brushing mine. 

“You. Well, me being with you? It’s complicated.” I scooted a little ways away from him, going up on tiptoe to get something off the top shelf. Bill reached over me, got it for me and handed it to me, but he wasn’t looking at me when i said “Thanks.” 

I caught his gaze; he was looking at a few redheads that were in the main walkway. “What does faggot mean?” 

My blood ran cold. Oh Jesus. Why did people have to exist around a dream demon? “It… uh…” 

“Tell me.” His voice was close, and dangerous. I was sweating at this point, but only because I could remember his eyes going red, the echo of his voice when he’d still been the triangle. I thought for a second I could see a hint of red in one iris. 

“It’s … derogatory.” Why was I panting? “For gay m-males. A slur? I … d-dunno where it’s from exactly…” My heart was pounding as he leaned over me. Dammit, this was not the correct reaction. I should not be … aroused or … whatever… from him being angry with me! 

But he wasn’t angry with me. He was angry at them. He turned slowly to stare holes in the shelves, tracking their progress. 

It was surreal, like some kind of movie from the 40’s when I tugged on his leather lapels and murmured at him, “It’s nothing, really… it doesn’t bother me, b-” I almost said babe to calm him down… what the hell? “Bill…” 

His attention returned to me slowly, his arm snaking around my waist and tugging me against his side. “Why do they give a shit?”

It was weird talking to him this close, and I had to try hard not to squeak when he slipped a hand in my back pocket. “I … I dunno.” He was so far into my head now; had I let him in? I could feel him in there, hovering, almost tasting my emotions. I didn’t usually mind homophobes, it was just a little bit of a sore subject after having to part with Mabel. I figured they could go fuck themselves… 

 

Bill nodded, as if all that make sense and I bristled at him being so … intimately inside my head. Before I could say anything, he murmured “Well, I like it. I think this suits us just fine.” 

Us? Us?! What was that supposed to mea- I didn’t get very far in my inner chattering before he kissed me on the lips, chaste and sweet. 

“So what else?” Was he blushing? Was Bill Cipher blushing? “What else were we getting here?” He pulled away, hands back in his pockets and I almost protested… almost. My mouth hung open, looking like a moron in the middle of the walkway as he started without me. “Food? What other… foods… carbon based corpses, cooled, collected and otherwise categorized here in this colossal waste of space?”

That allowed me to shake out of my stupor a little, but i think it was his intention to rattle me, to get me back on my footing. “You really know how to put a charming spin on things, B- uh… babe.”

He startled at that, but grinned, catching on. I didn’t want anyone hearing Bill anywhere near me, or even this town really. They’d seen enough of him already. “You know me darling. Always an optimist.”

I nearly choked. “Oh my God.”

It was better with him there, I suppose, but I became more and more aware of the speculative looks, the disapproving frowns … the whispers following us. I'd forgotten how small this town was. Forgotten that Ford and Stan had holed up to be the weirdos in the shack, a pair of eccentric brothers that didn't want to be disturbed. They played it off pretty well, Stan with his smoke and charm, Ford and his natural inclination towards clinically dismissive of anything he wasn't studying. 

But this? Dipper Pines with some blonde playboy punk? 

“Do you have a fever or something?” he finally asked me when we were checking out. I'd always used the self check out things but today, the noise and the robot blabbing the prices at me was almost overwhelming. 

“Wh-what?” I hissed incredulously. 

He gave me a long look, then glared at the machine. I felt the little zap he gave it, and it shut up. I wondered, belatedly, I'd he destroyed the sspeakers 

When we gathered up our crap, we passed by a couple of elderly women and the phrase “They let all sorts in now” caught Bill's attention. 

He froze and turned. I just hunched my shoulders, unwilling to be fussed at by a pair of grannies about my fucking sexual preferences. I hooked a finger into his belt loop as he turned to face them and just whimpered softly “Please… let's just go?” 

He wrapped an arm around my shoulders after a moment, turning his face into my hair. Before I knew it I was holding the groceries in my lap in the passenger seat, staring out the window as we drove back to the shack. Wait, passenger?!

When I shook myself out of it, there he was, cool as a cucumber, relaxed as ever, like he'd been born to drive. “And were we're back!” he said playfully. I could tell he was still pissed but … did that make me more important?

“Where… did you learn how to drive? How do you know where we're going? What if - “ 

He stopped me with a finger on my lips, then tapped my skull. I nearly growled. 

His answering grin made me far happier than it should have.


	13. The Other Side of the Coin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill’s note: Such hopeful, happy comments. Did y’all read WTK? You -do- remember it, yah? (#WhenY’allForgot) I also have been super busy, sorry updates have been so slow! I’ll try to get a better rhythm going with writing again. ♥

_I wasn’t sure what to call my new emotion that I’d found in the store. My reaction to feeling Dipper’s shame, their derision… it had that same sense of familiarity I felt when he touched me. I found that if I tried, and if he was in a trusting mood I could convince him to do things, influence his mind easier. Those pricks had opened a soul wound and I didn’t know why… didn’t really want to know why._

_So easy to play the part he wanted me to, easier still to find the parameters in his mind: Supportive, docile, playful, a little clumsy, a little shy. We made some bratwurst (no idea why they’re called that when you don’t roast them on a spit) to go with the mashed potatoes and sat at the table. I let him babble about his research and asked easy questions, leaning in to reinforce the interested air I was portraying. And I was interested, he was quite clever, my human… But this was all a facade, a smoke screen. If I cared about the petty triumphs he shared with me while he was rattled, how could I not care infinitely more for the things that haunted him? I couldn’t undo what I’d already broken, what I couldn’t remember… but I could fix this._

_He talked himself out about 3 hours later, when his eyelids started drooping, he yawned and looked up at me sheepishly._

_“Well that was rude,” he said, blushing a bit._  
  
_“Yawning? Nonsense, it’s simply the brain asking for more oxygen when your heart rate and breathing slow. You get tired, but the body tries to keep you awake. It’s not rude at all. It is, I think, time for you to get some sleep though.” So easy to charm him, to gently pry him from the chair, to drag his already tired mind further towards sleep; and then in turn to physically drag him into my arms and sweep him up to bed. “Come now, sleep time.” It was easier to con him when it wasn’t_ him _I was trying to hurt. Settling him on the bed… it somehow felt wrong to undress him still._  
  
_The boy finally settled, I slipped outside, hands in my pockets and began to walk._  
  
_A fog rolled in my wake as I moved toward the town. The nightmare grew around me as I moved, and I smiled to myself. I may not remember what Weirdmageddon was like, may not be the same being that terrorized them before, but they didn’t have to know that. I could be plenty terrifying now. Piercing howls split the night around me as I walked down main street, sending the fog into ever house, from the focal point of the center._  
  
_In the mindscape, a pack of white gold hounds strained at their leashes, ready to tear at the closed minded folk that lived there. Their eyes were menthol blue, their teeth looked more like flame than bone, and their claws drew sparks as they scraped on the ground, scrabbling toward each frightened mind._  
  
_“I See In My Absence You Have All Returned To Your Horrible Ways,” I said imperiously, the tone cutting. I had draped myself over a stone throne in front of the town courthouse, it’s former occupant kneeling at my feet. “Did I Teach You Nothing On My Last Visit? Perhaps You Need A Reminder Of What Happens When You Decaying Blood Balloons Decide To Ostracize Your Own?!” I kept my appearance shrouded, showing only the gold eye, and easily making the triangle with a bowtie easily into a human appearance; even had a cane to match the ostentatious appearance of a formal tux and cumberbund._  
  
_Lightning streaked overhead, pink fire to split the sky in stripes. The ground cracked, beginning at the foot of the throne and threading it’s way through the town, upsetting every threshold. Doors cracked in two, windows shattered and blasted away into razor sharp specks of sand. I could feel the minds of the townspeople slowly focusing, turning into terror. Specters streaked into the cracks in the houses._  
  
_“In Such A Strange Little Town, And You Can’t Accept Anything That Comes About That You Don’t Personally Enjoy? Why You All Are More_ **_Monstrous_ ** _Than I … (urgk-!)”_  
  
_Something muzzled my words, choking me. Dark blue filled my vision as I flew backwards through the Mindscape, through structures and stone and trees… I vaguely wondered if they got what I was hinting at, and also where the hell I was going._  
  
_The dark blue flashed again across my vision and tossed me out of the Mindscape… at the foot of Dipper’s bed. Those same blue chains that had appeared on him were now circling_ **_my_ ** _neck and wrists… and the other ends were in his hand._  
  
_He was sitting up in bed where I’d left him, staring perplexed at the chains in his hand. “What… did you do?”_  
  
_I gulped, looking up at him and still panting for breath. I hadn’t been able to stand yet. I slipped my fingers under the wide collar to create a little more room, and noticed the color was subtly different… the same darker blue._

 _I just gulped in another breath, looking up at him. It had to be the deal… what else would work like that on_ **_me_ ** _?_

 

_I was so screwed._


	14. Don't Hit Your Biggest Fan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill’s note: sorry for such a short chapter! I’ve tried to hurry this one along for you :D The title is a bad pun and i'm not even a little bit sorry.

“So,” I said lightly, hefting the chains in my hand, waking a little more. I had no idea what he’d been up to, but he’d just interrupted a really vivid sex dream I’d been having about him with … whatever this was. I crossed my legs under the covers, hoping that between the jeans I was still wearing and the covers in my lap, he wouldn’t notice. “What is all this then?”  
  
“Pi- Dipper I can explain…!”  
  
He seemed really upset. With himself? Ah well, time to bluff. “Yeah? Well good! Cuz I’m waitin’ here; Start talking!” I tried to yank on the chains, just to see if it would work, but they dissolved. I crossed my arms instead, feeling ridiculous.  
  
“They shouldn’t be allowed to make you feel like that. Like their opinions even matter! You should be allowed to do what you want! I don’t know what you were so self conscious about, it’s not like we’re a … thing…”  
  
Ok, ow.  
  
“And even if we were, it’s not something either of us asked for. I mean, you … you _hobbled_ me for fuck’s sake…”  
  
“Hobbled?”  
  
“What would you call this?” He gestured to the new mark on his neck, a raw looking band of skin where the collar had been. I _had_ felt a little bad about that until he threw it in my face.  
  
“Well you clearly deserve it; what did you do?”  
  
“I haunted them.”  
  
“... You what?”  
  
“I haunted them!” He ran a hand through his hair and flowed to his feet, feline grace again, pacing the small attic room. “I’ve spent the last two hours crafting the perfect nightmare for these close minded little freaks and your _spell_ just ruined it! All I can hope for is that the nightmare remained intact enough for them to feel it... “ He rolled his shoulders a little, as if testing something. “Actually, I feel a lot better than -”  
  
“You haunted the entire town? At once?” I couldn’t help the squeak my voice had become. Shit, he was so powerful! I had never heard of that before, shared dreaming? Running a massive nightmare for … everyone… “Why would you do that?!”  
  
“They slighted you. Mocked you! It’s none of their business.”  
  
“And what people think of me is none of _yours!_ ” I was incensed. “How _dare_ you treat me like… like some sort of damsel all the time! I was _just. fine._ before you Bill, and I don’t need you meddling around in my li-”  
  
“Meddling!”  
  
“Yes! Meddling! Giving an entire town of normal people nightmares over two homophobic comments is officially the fucking definition of meddling!”

He looked upset, shocked. “Well, catch me trying to bend the world to your will ever again,” he muttered.  
  
I could not believe this. “What? What?! I … why would I want that? I just want them to leave me alone, you idiot. Did you mention me at all? Or actually get specific? What did you spew at them?” I could picture the terrible eldritch form again, chasing me through the Fearamid, and I shivered in reflex, remembering our terror. All those arms. “ _Leave Dipper Pines and his new blonde_ NOT BOYFRIEND _alone or I’ll disassemble your molecules?_ You’ve already used that one, by the way, but no sense wasting a good bit, don’t you think?”  
  
“What? And make you more of a target? How big an idiot do you think I am?”  
  
I didn’t dignify that with a response; I was way too busy clenching my jaw to respond.  
  
“Well! Excuse me for giving a fuck, you ungrateful …”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Yes?!”  
  
“Yes, you’re excused.”  
  
“Fine! Let me know when you need your ass saved again. How’s the nose, by the way?”  
  
“Fuck you.”  
  
“ _In your dreams._ ”  
  
I blushed crimson at that; did he know?! I propelled myself out of bed, stomping to the door in my socks, which felt ridiculous and wrenched it open, not looking at him.

He gasped, insulted, and just disappeared.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was _glad_ he was gone. Thank fuck. He was such an _infuriating_ distraction. I couldn’t stand it! I paced the room, arguing with him in his absence. He was such an overbearing jerk! I didn’t count on this. For the first time, I was upset that I’d lived through the spell! At least if I’d died, even in failure, I wouldn’t have to deal with his bullshit.  
  
In my agitation I started running my hands over my pockets and felt my tiny sketchbook in my back pocket, then tossed it angrily onto the desk. It fell open onto the different tattoos Bill had, irritating me further. “I don’t care,” I muttered, trying to make it the truth. “I Don’t!”  
  
Pacing away from the desk didn’t help my continued curiosity, couldn’t help but wonder why he had those tattoos. With a heavy sigh, I sat back down, slouched a little as I looked it over, turning it back and forth. I’d never seen anything like that. But… looking at the other pages…

Anubis, Pluto, Cerberus. They were all death gods, well, gods of the underworld. I pulled my laptop out and began to sift through the internet for crap about Hades. Then Pluto. Then their three headed dog.  
  
“No… No! Not… not the Disney version… bah.” I closed the entire window with a groan, pillowing my face on the keyboard, ignoring the error noises the damn thing was making. My only real reference was BIll himself but he was even less informed than I was. He couldn’t remember anything about his old life and I certainly wasn’t asking him now. What I wouldn’t give to figure this crap out, whatever Bill’s connection was to these deities, what that other tattoo meant. It would be one thing if there was reliable information on the internet about all of these gods but there was nothing that was too concrete.  
  
Ok, ok. What did I have already? Anubis was a death god with a dog head. Cerberus was a dog _of_ a death god. And this symbol certainly looked tribal… on a whim, I typed in ‘tribal god dog death’ into Google. What did I have to lose?  
  
Pictures, a basset hound version of Cerberus, ugh, some Rolling Stone article… ‘Dogs in religion’ from wikipedia. “Don’t mind if I do,” I said softly. They were even in alphabetical order. Ancient Egypt had Anubis, which I’d already figured out. The next category was Aztec. “Alright, I’ll bite.”  
  
The first link, ‘Dogs in MesoAmerican folklore and myth’ was actually pretty short. I didn’t really have much to go on. The other tattoos had been blatant representations, depictions specific references to dieties… So I skimmed the pictures. “Nope.”  
  
The next link that seemed promising started with an X. “Ze-law-t’l?” I tried to sound out the strange word that I read: Xolotl. “Freakin ancient langua-” I froze. There it was. First picture on the top. An exact copy of the tattoo he had. I had to tear my eyes away from the picture to read. “Lightning and death… guarding the sun in the underworld… dogs... blah blah blah…” I suddenly gulped, suddenly a bit more of a believer. “T-twins, monsters, misfortune, sickness, d-deformities… the dark star Venus… associated with heavenly fire.” I read on. Most of it was about the Aztec belief in his role with the sun, about the dogs (apparently this guy really liked dogs), journeying to the underworld… but the last paragraph caught my eyes. “Syphilis… an aspect … god of monsters, deforming diseases, and deformities. The syphilitic god Nanahuatzin is an avatar of Xolotl.”  
  
I sat back with a huff. I stared for a moment at the little sketch book. And here I’d thought Bill might be some kind of demonic knight… Just how far off was I?  
  
I thought of Ford and his polydactylism… a common trait of children born to couples wherein one or both have syphilis. I thought of myself as well, the second set of twins to procure Bill’s attention. Monsters. Fire. Now days we called it all ‘weirdness’ but… wasn’t that what all these creatures were? Monsters? Then it was no mistake he’d found his way here.  
  
Bill wasn’t a demon. I gulped. He was a god.

I was so screwed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Proof of that set of words being searched in Google: http://itssinwithagrin.tumblr.com/post/157285041602/proof-of-a-google-search-for-the-readers-of-our
> 
> The wikipedia Xolotl article is listed there. I have also looked up articles like this for my fics so it might be a little catered to MY searches? But i took a picture for y'all! ^^


	15. Be Careful What You Wish For

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill’s note: If you haven’t read When They Knew (and kinda Grecian Gays) by now, you really should, otherwise you’ll be super confused xD it’s at the beginning of this series! And it’s not all that long. So go take a second and do that first; it'll make this a whole lot smoother.

I’m really not sure how long I sat there, staring at my research and my conclusions. I had no idea where Bill had gone. I was struck by how arrogant I’d been with him. Knowing what I knew now, I was shocked by just how horribly rude I’d come across. How I’d thought to control him. Wards on the doors. Hah! I ran a hand through my hair and realized I was shaking. I stared at the tremors, an astounded bark of laughter escaping me.   
  
I heard a boot scuff behind me and looked up at the mounted magnifying glass I’d taken from Ford’s lab. It was waiting, out of the way of my work area, but I could see him reflected on the surface. After what I’d just learned, I found I was no longer angry with him. Or offended by his choice or anything he’d done anymore… I just wanted to know … “Why?” I felt so hollow, as if only the answer to that question would help me piece together all the little tiny fragments floating around.   
  
“Dipper, I’m so sorry. You were right, I overstepped my -”   
  
“Why, Bill?” I stood, turning and looking up at him. He was taller than me. I found I liked that. “Why me?”   
  
“I … I know I don’t deserve to be here after… everything that I’ve done and if you want me out of your life I can under-”   
  
“Stop… talking about other shit. Why. Me?” I grabbed his shirt and found myself leaning into him. He was a god. A god. _A god._ And he was here with me.

He looked so defeated, his earnest apology wasted on me. His head hung nearly to his chest, eyes closed, breath leaving him in a slow sigh of despair. I wanted to tell him it was ok but I was hollow inside. “You know I don’t remember,” he said, regret and pain in every barely audible word.   
  
“It… it comes back when you touch me, right? Or when I touch you?” Was that all? I had to know. _I_ _had to understand._  
  
“Well… yes but … you…”   
  
“Take what you need.” I pulled on his shirt and hauled him closer, fitting myself into him as he looked down at me.   
  
“Wh-a…?” I didn’t let him finish. I pressed up onto my tiptoes and kissed him. He seemed slow on the uptake, I figured I’d get him started. My fingers fumbled on the buttons of his shirt, clumsy now from their shaking.   
  
I was kissing a god. A god. A _god._   
  
He gasped and broke from my lips as he heard that echoing in my head. “What did you just say?” He sounded incredulous… and out of breath.   
  
“Shut _up_ and remember. I have to know…!” My voice was pleading, strained.   
  
He’d been holding my wrists passively, letting me do as I wanted (which at the moment was trying to taste his fucking tonsils and get his damn shirt off) but now he held them fast and stared at me. “What did you call me.”1  
  
“The tattoos… on your back. You’re not … I don’t… they’re all death gods. The big one I didn’t know? I-Is the mark of Xolotl the god of monsters… and _twins_ … That symbol is only found on that god and his avatars, Bill…I need…”   
  
He seemed to be waiting for me to tell him something, his face was all scrunched up like there was something he wanted to hear. “What. You need… what.”   
  
_You? Is that what you want to hear?_ “I need you to remember, Bill. You remember when we touch… s-so touch me.” I squirmed, blushing, mortified I’d just asked for that… but it was nothing, nothing compared with the need to understand.

His face settled a little, sorting through the meaning of that statement. “Skin,” he murmured, bringing one of my hands to his face and pressing my fingers to his cheek. “You need to have contact with my skin… I don’t know… why…” his hands slipped down my sides to my hips, the long fingers gripping me suddenly as his eyes widened. “I’m… scared for some reason.”   
  
“Me too.”   
  
“I feel like this has gone horribly wrong before, Dipper, I -”   
  
“It can’t go any worse than the last 6 years you spent apparently trying to get my attention before.”   
  
His face cleared a little at that, then he gave me the first hint of a wry smile. “Thanks,” he chuckled, cutting the acidic sarcasm… And I couldn’t help but smile a little myself. “That’s better,” was the last thing he muttered before he fit his mouth over mine.

  
  


_The bleed of time was horrifying. I didn’t really understand what he wanted me to remember, or if I’d remember any of the things I’d seen snippets of… I certainly didn’t_ **_want_ ** _to relive that, or remember my sins._

_For the last few hours, I’d been panicking myself, trying to figure out how to get back in his good graces. I felt sick, physically ill when he was unhappy. Not only was that a further hobbling of whatever I was, it also created emotions that I had no basis for, no memory to back up. I’d come back because his panic had suddenly ended and I didn’t know why. I thought perhaps he’d passed out or something, and had been determined to talk, wheedle, even beg. Pissing off the only person who might possibly like you isn’t exactly the smartest idea._

_This… this was not what I thought I would be walking into. He was throwing himself at me. Some little part of me was quite relishing that fact, while another part dismayed that it wasn’t genuine, it wasn’t for him…_

_I slipped my hands under the back of his shirt anyways, leaning my cheek into his hand. Why did that come with so much longing, so much pain? He was desperate to get closer, almost dancing in place as he tried to … to what? “Pine Tree, you can’t force this on me by … kissing harder,” I couldn’t help snickering at him and he bit my lip in retaliation._   
  
_“Well…! I …” He was blushing so very hard at that comment._   
  
_“I_ **_will_ ** _tie you up if you can’t sit still,” I threatened, my hands tightening on his hips._   
  
_“What?!” He tried to wiggle out of my grasp, apparently unwilling to actually put in the time for this._   
  
_When he broke away from my hold (which I allowed) I pulled his arms behind him and squeezed them together, a small drop of cold fire coating his wrists… when I released him, they were bound fast. Sweet. “It’s distracting,” I crooned, pulling him back against me, running my nose up his neck. I started pulling the tshirt off, just letting it hang over his bound wrists as I spun him slowly. “You want me to focus on remembering? Or on holding you still?”_   
  
_“Remember,” he insisted, shivering and not quite as sure as he’d been a moment ago. I stalked forward a few steps and he stumbled back onto the bed. “N-no… Bill?”_   
_  
“Hush,” I growled at him, pushing him back, then laying on his legs, “I just want you where you can’t squirm so much.” The changes in tone were alarming and natural. I could have sworn that phrase sounded a little deeper than the first, more of a coaxing tone to it. _

_And it seemed to work. Dipper froze, blushed harder and started holding his breath without realizing it. “Okay,” he squeaked at me._

_So now what? I kissed up his stomach, crawling over him slowly and watching the blush spread down his neck, little tremors in the muscles. “Did I do something wrong?”_   
  
_“N-nope. No. That… no.”_   
  
_“Have you done this before?”_   
  
_“... n-no.”_

 _“The virgin leading the amnesiac. Wonderful,” I groused playfully, brushing my lips up his neck, along his jaw._  
  
_“Y-you’re an asshole.”_

_“Thought you knew that.” The banter wasn’t new, but it almost felt like it was important, like it was part of .. something._

 

_-You’re not a very scary death god.-_

 

 _“Well we haven’t established that’s who I really … am…” he was looking at me like I’d grown another head. “You didn’t say anything out loud, did you?”_   
  
_He shook his head, wide eyed and biting his lips to stay quiet._   
  
_“You were right! I … I remembered something!”_   
  
_That broke his shakey resolve. “Oh so_ **_now_ ** _you believe me?”_   
  
_“Oh shut up.” I didn’t give him a chance to reply to that and kissed him again, holding myself over him on my elbows and lowering the rest of the body down slowly onto his._   
_  
He made this noise that I couldn’t name, but it certainly sounded good… a sort of soft surrender. I snapped, releasing his wrists and just tried to … see. _

_-The boy was asleep… no, unconscious …. Next to me. Not all that close but within reach. He was covered in gold paint, every inch, smeared a little on a few spots. I could see the matching marks on my own hands… I must have caught him when he passed out … why did he… -_

  
_  
I had to come up for air, and Dipper was panting hard under me. His hands had thread their way into my hair and they were pulling me down again…. But this time, the scene was different. _

  
_  
_ _-I’d just caught an urn he’d thrown at me, and his brown eyes were furious under a mop of glorious curls.  “If I’ve said this once, it’s been a thousand times, Hades, I will not be swayed! This life is mine to live and you cannot take my death from me. Do **not** bring it up again!” I could feel my face harden in that moment as I purposefully let the pottery drop from my fingers onto the floor, turning away as it shattered at my feet. I ignored his shriek of outrage and just walked away. He didn’t, couldn’t know how much those words had hurt me, how badly wounded I was at his refusal to spend eternity at my side. I must have done something wrong… I sighed. Humans could be so fickle. I’d simply have to apologize and approach this another way… I wasn’t planning on losing him again.- _

 

 _“Wai… wait…” I stuttered out, pulling my mouth away from his to kiss back down his neck. My hands stroked down his back, digging my nails in._   
  
_“What… did you…”_   
  
_“We’ve always bickered,” I murmured softly as I nipped at his collar bone. “And you’ve been mine since the birth of your soul…”_   
  
_“You… got that from… five minutes?”_   
_  
“We have life times to catch up on, it would seem,” I crooned before sealing my lips against his again. _

_He pushed at me a little, his breath harsh but not from passion… this was panic. I eased back slowly, only going far enough to rest my forehead on his. “E-explain that…”_

_I could feel the other little snippets lining up with what I knew now. “Trust me?”_  
  
_He sputtered. Hard. “Are you fucking kidding me?”_  
  
_“Ok then, fine, just sit still.” I turned my head a little, leaning into the hand still in my hair… “I like when you do that... Have you done that before?" I said, almost to myself._  
 _  
Agreeing to do so or not, he did actually trust me quite a bit. Not sure if it was from practice now or if he was making it easier but slipping into his head was quite easy… _

 

_-He was in my lap, nearly riding me at this point... “Are you going to try to tell me that you didn’t miss me, my lord?” Purring. My lover was purring...! Oh I was the happiest ever…He slipped his tongue into my mouth easily and I ran my hands up his sides with a moan.-_

  
  
_In the present day, the boy under me tried to kick me off with a disgusted noise. “Pervert! Geddoff…!”_   
  
_“Wait! Just… stop!” I flung my arms around him, not realizing I was still in his head when another memory hit me from the same time…_

_-His eyes were vacant and glassy. Heat waves rose from the stones around us and I could hear the temple falling into rubble from every direction. Rome was burning around us and I couldn’t care less. The stone was hot enough to vaporize my falling tears as I rocked him slowly, my expression deadpan. “You might have let me sustain you this life,” I whispered to him. “You might have s-stayed with m-me,” my voice finally broke and I buried my face against his neck. “Please darling… come back to me soon…” I begged as the flames took the flesh. They were so hot from blazing all over the city that the bodies were dust in seconds, the ashes kicked up from the temperature fluctuations. I lifted from them reluctantly, sluggishly, unwilling to face another century without him as I watched the sparkling soul remnants of my love flit away on the wind. It was agony to see them go… But I followed them.-_

_This time I tossed myself off the bed and worked my way out of his head, slowly, determined not to get caught in the webs around his consciousness. I could hear him keening, curled up on his side as he stared at me, horrified._  
  
_“I’m sorry,” I felt like my throat was coated in sandpaper. “I’m so… sorry.”_  
  
_“What… was that. Why were we in Rome… I was dead. I Was Dead! Why…” He groaned as I left completely, holding his head in his own hands._

 _I could feel myself shaking, trying to work through that memory myself. It was stronger with him there, more encompassing of the events surrounding each snippet. “I shouldn’t go looking when … we’re.... I should show you things I’ve already seen.”_   
_  
His eyes were full of tears. “You were P-Pluto. Who… what was I then?” _

_“You are who you’ve always been darling…” I suddenly felt exhausted, wrapping my arms around myself. “Just a little older.”_   
  
_“Don’t… don’t be so far away?” He seemed unsure about that question, but he reached for me again. I very gently placed my hand in his, and he tugged, pulling me back to bed. “I don’t wanna be… cold…”  That statement made me wonder if he'd felt the embrace of death in that memory. His ashen face would suggest that he had._   
  
_I slipped back into the bed, next to him this time, dragging the covers down from under him. He tossed the shirt and wiggled out of his jeans with a groan. He glared at me when I tried to come to bed without doing the same. “What about…?”_   
  
_“You can deal with that shit on your own. Or maybe I’ll be better at it when I’m dreaming. But… I …” He seemed stuck there, as if he had a half formed thought or emotion._   
  
_“... Yeah. Same.” I wasn’t surprised when he immediately cuddled back up to me. I gently freed my arm and slipped it around him, resting my forehead against his. He was tense -_

 

_-strung tight like a bow-_

 

 _\- but I figured that was normal after… that. I curled on my side towards the boy in my arms and he looked up at me, shocked. “It messed with me too.”_   
_  
He nodded slowly, then hesitantly ran his fingers over my hip bone, holding me lightly back and scooting closer. Neither of us were aware enough for anything beyond dreamless sleep. _


	16. Moth to Flame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dipper’s Note: Trauma makes for interesting mornings my dears. Dipper might be slightly cracked, a little.  
> Bill’s note: Lost his last marble after feeling what death is like through a memory. Wups. >.>

I woke up with a headache like the 80’s (headbanger) and stared at Sleeping Beasty next to me. His hair was flopped into his face, like a freakin’ model, the asshole. The horror of our memory hunt last night tried to encroach on my pre-coffee brain, but I very firmly told it no. It took me a second to disentangle from the blonde, then another to complete my sidequest to the john. Finally, I was well on my way to obtaining the Elixir of Awakening.  
  
Mechanically, I went through the motions of preparing the coffee pot. Old grounds in a baggie, new filter, new coffee, water… yes. Good. Like clockwork. The Sacred Ritual of the Awakening was well underway and after I pressed the Button of Boiling, I shuffled on my house shoes to go dump the old grounds into the trash can.

Like always, I opened the door, sidestepped the large wolf that tried to shove his nose into my boxers, opened the metal trash can, walked back around the NPC wo- wolf? I stared down at the brownish grey canine, usually an animal I tried very hard to avoid, and it _wagged it’s tail and wuffed at me._

I stared back for a moment. “Nope,” I mumbled, “Nopenopenope.” I turned, gently shut the door in the not-a-nice-doggy’s face and went to stare at the coffee pot. It’s impossible to freak out before coffee. I very calmly got a cup out of the cupboard, ignoring the alarming shaking in my hand. There was enough of the Elixir now to begin the Ritual. Funny how the horrific shaking stopped while pouring boiling hot liquid gold into a cup. After the first sip though, a few things started to click.  
  
I stared at the door for a moment, trying not to make any more noise than necessary and suddenly a wet nose smeared the kitchen door’s window. I put down the pot before my flinching made me drop really hot liquid and glass on my bare legs and cleared my throat.

“BILL! HOLY FUCKING SHIT THERE IS A FUCKING WOLF ON THE PORCH!!!” Let’s be real though, blind terror or no, that pot was back under the Fountain of Life pouring from Mr. Coffee’s … Pours… that got away from me…  
  
I went back to calmly sipping Liquid Black Gold from my FOXY LADY mug (no idea why that was in the house), patiently waiting for my … all powerful … thingy… to come deal with The Problem. Sure enough, I heard a loud thump and an (“ow!”) when he hit the floor, a serene, smug smile on my face as I heard him scrambling on the wood floors and stairs down to me. I knew enough about the demonity (my new word for the ball and chain) to understand that me screaming would startle him into sudden action. He burst into the kitchen, holding my alarm clock like a club, it’s sad little cord trailing behind him.  
  
“Where is it!”  
  
I stared at him a moment, trying to hold in the snicker… which failed. I bent over laughing, hard, at how dumb he looked in socks, boxers, messy hair, while brandishing my alarm clock at a wolf. I had to wheeze to get enough air to point and talk. “To-ld youhuhuuu… porch…! Aaaahahaha… oh my god, that _hurts…!_ ”

He slowly lowered, then dropped the alarm clock, and I suddenly despaired at it’s modern design.. It would have been much funnier if the little bells on the old timey ones had dinged as it fell.

“You were just messing with me weren’t you? There isn’t a wolf?”  
  
I just laughed harder, helplessly sliding the coffee onto the counter so I could curl up for air on the floor and howl.

When I could see again, he was smiling at me fondly with his head cocked to the side, just watching me. “Is it too late to comment about your fragile hold on sanity?”  
  
That didn’t help the giggles, which were now so painful that I could only make strangled _ack ack ack_ sounds, curling on my side to cradle my aching stomach when the wolf whined from the porch and scratched at the door.  
  
Bill was back in action immediately, combat mode like McSkirmish, stooping to reclaim his alarmclockclub. This didn’t help my laughing fit at all. Bill’s head fell to his chest with his own chuckle, nudging me with his foot to roll me on my back, then leaning over me. “You gonna recover there?”  
  
I couldn’t even talk now, mutely shaking my head as tears streamed down my face. He ran a hand through my hair, looking fond and sweet… That helped. The giggles finally tapered off to hiccups as he brushed the laugh-tears off my face with his thumb.  
  
“There, that’s better. Now, can we deal with the wolf on the porch?”  
  
“Beauregard,” I managed solemnly, before another giggle hiccup escaped me. “H-His name.. Is B-Beauregard.”

“You… named a wild animal?”  
  
“We’re friends, he already nuzzled my d-dick,” I really couldn’t stop giggling, splaying my limbs out to the sides. I think it was all the strain of the last few days, finally breaking with the absurdity of having a wolf on my porch. I tried to do snow angels but there wasn’t any snow… Tile angels didn’t have the same ring. I wondered suddenly if I was having a mental break down… then realized I didn’t care.

He looked more and more amused by the second, then folded his arms over his chest. “Would you like some more coffee before we meet … Beauregard?”  
  
“Ooooh coffee!” His answering chuckle as I scrambled back to my cup was a little mean, but I didn’t care. Who needed him. I had coffee.  
  
By the time I’d finished that cup, he’d magically produced clothing. I stared.  
  
“Did you like, make those from scratch?”  
  
He looked a little uncomfortable, then said slowly “Noooo I … walked upstairs and got them from your room. Seriously, are you ok?”  
  
I stared at the cup. Good stuff. “Yeah, I think I just need more coffee.”  
  
“Pants first.”  
  
I sputtered in protest as he shoved them at me, but he poured another cup while I put them on. “You _do_ love me,” I muttered in wonder, taking the cup back immediately when they were on properly.

His reply was fairly somber. “Yes, it would seem so.” I was busy putting a shirt on, that awkward stage where your face is covered and your arms are trapped when I heard the porch door open.  
  
I popped my head over the collar of my shirt and said “Is it Shia LeBeouf?!”  
  
Bill was already petting not-a-nice-doggy when he turned back to me, a confused look on his face. “I thought the wolf’s name was Beauregard?”  
  
“I thought you were on the internet now…”

“Yeah, like once.”

“Nevermind. Why is Beauregard even here? Are you like, a wolf whisperer? What does he say?”  
  
Bill stared at me a second, looked at Beauregard, who just stared back, then returned to looking at me. “Wuff.”  
  
“Very funny.”  
  
“No, Pine Tree, I’m not a wolf… whatever.”  
  
“Can we keep him!?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I wanna keep my friend Beauregard around. He seems cool.”  
  
“Um, ok, but I draw the line at dick nuzzling. I feel like that kinda of inter-specie-al … friendship… should be avoided.”  
  
I thought about that for a moment. “Fair,” and went back to my coffee.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It took me a really long time to calm down that morning. Eventually, Bill confined me to a chair near Mr. Coffee and we were allowed to watch him stare at the wolf. He was confident the animal wouldn’t hurt him and he was right. Aside from little puppy-like love nips, Beauregard seemed harmless.

He seemed even more protective of me though, which was starting to tick me off. Once the wolf had left, he walked over to stand in front of me, leaning against the counter with his arms crossed. I didn’t feel the need to stand now like I had that day in the forest. I was about belly height but it didn’t seem to matter. It didn’t bother me now.

He seemed to be studying me as he had the canine, his head tilted as he liked to do. “I dunno how to be around you,” he finally murmured, and I noticed he was holding onto his biceps hard enough to leave nail marks… to keep from touching me?

“Me neither,” was all I could think of to reply with. I stared forward at his stomach, frowning, then leaned forward to rest my head against him with a groan.  
  
He sucked in a breath, flinching, but I was pretty sure it was because I’d surprised him. “I like being allowed to touch you… it helps me remember, yeah, but … it’s just nice on its own…” He sounded like he was forcing the words out, but I knew why… if we were going to talk about this, now was the time.  
  
I was already nodding along, inadvertently rubbing my nose against his belly. “Me too.” It came out as more of a sigh than I’d intended it to but… I found I didn’t care anymore. “What even is this?”  
  
He very, very gently ran a hand into my hair, then down the back of my neck. “Would giving it a name change anything?”  
  
I turned my face to think about that, enjoying the feeling of his fingers petting through my hair. “Um, I guess not? But it would help me, as a human with basic knowledge of relationships, figure out what comes next?”  
  
“Alright then,” he said gently, his hand twirling a little around a lock of hair. “I’d say based on last night’s… events… that we … are… or have been? soulmates… in your previous lives. I saw more snippets than you did, and I was still the same life.” He took a deep breath to avoid mentioning the elephant in the room - the memory where I’d actually been dead - and pressed on. “It seems like we might have just picked up where we left off each time? However, that seems to have stopped working so…”

“So this time we have had to start from scratch,” I finished for him, nodding along. “Ok well, we got off on the COMPLETE OPPOSITE FOOT with Weirdmageddon, which you’ve forgotten anyways, and I’m feeling a lot better about who you are now so… Who are you this life? You were Anubis, and Hades, and Pluto, and maybe Xolotl… Who are you now?”  
  
He smiled and suddenly I knew his answer. “I’m the same I’ve always been, darling, just a little older.”

I smiled up at him and stood slowly, crowding him again. “And where does that leave … us? You still haven’t answered that.”  
  
“You’re the human with memories and relevant labels and the need _for_ those labels so… you tell me.”  
  
“Fine; I’d say we’re dating, then, and only just. We’ve officially had one date that caused major drama; you’re super controlling -”  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“- and I’m unhealthily ok with that. On purpose.” I squirmed a little; this was going to get a little too hott to handle if we kept just _talking,_ because I _really_ like bossy boys…

“... Interesting.”

“I’m like a moth to flame; I love danger, can’t’cha tell?” I lifted my chin, trying to find a little steel to strap to my spine for this conversation.  
  
“You’re pretty cute for a moth,” he said dubiously, pulling me closer by the hips.  
  
I sighed inwardly at his treading in place. I couldn’t keep this up, this kind of forward … behavior just wasn’t me… _Just…. Do it already!_  
  
He blinked in surprise as I thought as loudly as I could at him, then smirked and leaned closer, responding in kind. _Do what?_  
_  
_ Asshole. _Anything_! I’m fairly certain I was blushing hot enough to register a fever if he’d taken my temperature at that point.

“Alright, but you asked for it,” he warned, then kissed me. Hard.

He’d been holding back, it suddenly occurred to me. I had no idea if he could really feel our previous lives or something while making out but he didn’t seem to care. He backed me up against the kitchen counter, pinning me to it with his hips while his nails scraped up my spine. I wrapped my arms around his neck to hold on to him, feeling dizzy with how fast he had literally robbed me of my last breath…

And I hadn’t even opened my mouth yet.

I pulled back, panting for air and stared at him, gulping a little as I noticed his eyes were a little brighter now. He knew I needed oxygen… it was almost like he was waiting for my lungs to fill before starting again.  
  
“Had enough yet?” His tone was teasing and light, thumbs rubbing on my skin lightly along my ribs.  
  
If he stopped now, I was going to kill him.  
  
This must have registered on my face because he laughed softly and pulled me tighter to himself, then snapped. We were suddenly in my bedroom, and I was dizzy again.

“Why did you insist on clothes?” I grumbled, squirming free enough to tug at his shirt.  
  
“That was almost an hour ago…!” he said incredulously and snapped again, fixing that little problem.  
  
I yelped, suddenly cold and naked, even with him holding me. “Wh-what?”  
  
“Trust me.”  
  
“You keep saying that like it’s possible,” I tried to grumble at him but it came out small… and scared.

“I’m not… I don’t … I want you to want me back,” he finished lamely as I squirmed under the covers, shivering.  
  
“Okay.” My voice sounded so fragile. It was stupid. I was nineteen! I-Intimacy shouldn’t bother me so much.  
  
The sun was on the other side of the house so it was still quite dark in the room, and even then I’d already seen him naked, and nothing had changed. I hid in the blankets a little as he slipped in with me, laying on his back like he always did. I knew from experience he was eternally warm, and after a moment crept over to cuddle against his side.

“Slower?” he asked, turning to run a hand up my side.  
  
“Naked… i-it’s different naked.”  
  
He looked baffled. “Isn’t that the point? Humans are so strange.”  
  
I huffed at him, trying to scoot back but he tightened his hold, scooting closer. I was acutely aware of the fact that _everything was touching_ at the moment and hunched in on myself further. He rolled a little farther, half pinning me to the bed and started again, slower.

I have no idea where demons or gods learn how to kiss humans. It seemed ridiculous that he would know how, or for that matter be so damned good at it, but I was boneless again almost immediately. I resolutely ignored the possibilities beyond kissing for the moment as I’d never actually made it _this_ far and tried to stop thinking about everything…

I guess that was really when I started _believing_ , because only a deity could make _me_ relax enough to melt like this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the Shia LeBeouf reference. I was reading out loud and this happened   
> "I was busy putting a shirt on/ that awkward stage where your face is covered and your arms are trapped/ when I heard the porch door open./" 
> 
> and I said "Shia LeBeouf!"
> 
> and we dissolved into giggles.


	17. Virgins Shouldn't Teach Sex Ed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alternative titles for this chapter were "The Virgin Leading The Amnesiac" and "I Know Lots Of Things... But Not This"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sin ahoy! 1761 words, everyone of them sinful.

_Was it possible for a human to come apart from pleasure? I could feel him shivering under me as I ran my fingertips up his ribs, stroking the skin between them gently. I'd never done this, never touched this much of him at once. It was different than last night, but the reason wasn't difficult to figure out. I was focused on him, in this life, on his reactions to me, not on trying to find memories._

_We were connected at nearly every joint, I noticed idly, but only a few seemed to matter. Jaw, hips, knees… if I nipped at his neck and he gasped, if I pulled his hips flush with mine he moaned, when I slipped my knees between his he writhed under me. This all felt familiar, welcome, and important… especially after the soul searching we'd done the night prior._

_“Dipper,” I said softly, muttering against his skin. Listening to his mind was adorable… a constant stream of obscenities to counterpoint the moans from his lips. I raked my nails down his side and he arched. “Fuck that's gorgeous,” I hissed at him softly. My arm slipped under his low back to hold him like that as I licked and nipped and kissed my way down his collar bones and chest._

_His hands slipped from around my neck to my hair, gently tugging on the strands as I continued down… I chanced a look up at him when I traced my tongue along the lower curve of his ribs slowly. He keened, pressing his groin up against me when I ran my teeth back down the other side. He was glorious… I couldn't help my delighted soft laugh as I felt his breath with every fluttering drag of his stomach muscles. I worked my way down a little farther, swirling my tongue in his belly button, my hands fanning up his inner thighs… then I stopped. “Other side,” I quipped lightly with a vicious grin, flipping him by the hip onto his belly._

_His disappointed, indignant little squawk was fantastic and he immediately tried to push himself up by his arms and look back at me._

_“No no, you wanted me to lead the dance. That means you follow, kid. Lay. Down.”_

_He slumped, crossing his arms under his head with a huff. I nipped at his buttcheek in retaliation, then kissed the spot gently. My hands slid under his stomach, gently stroking his skin. I switched to the other cheek, listening to his little noises of pleasure with each touch._

_“You're so reactive,” I marveled softly. I rested my head in the small of his back, just letting him breathe for a moment._

_“You're really… mmm…” he wiggled under me a little more. Apparently breathing was overrated._

_I chuckled at him, licking at the base of his spine gently. He shivered and pressed his hips into my mouth. I obliged him, licking farther up his spine and crawling over him as I worked my way up._

_I could feel him tense under me as I got higher, and for the first time since I'd inhabited this body, I understood what the fuss was all about… the drag of … that organ up his legs and backside was really quite something. I sucked in a breath as I rubbed myself between his slightly spread legs and he whimpered in response …_

_Not a good whimper. “Bill I…”_

_I grumbled at him. “You think I can't tell? I've said before: I want you to enjoy what I do to you, Pine Tree… kinda takes the fun out of it if you don't…” I ran my nose gently up his neck, then kissed behind his ear, over his jaw. “Do you need me to stop?” The tone of voice I was using was not all that fair… he melted further into the bed when I wrapped my arms tighter._

_“No! No… d-don'tstopplease…! F…!” I think he shorted out when my hands stroked between his legs. He lifted his hips away from my questing hands, then rubbed the full length of his… uhm… what had he called it? His dick? … along my palm._

_He squirmed under me, forcing me to prop myself up on one elbow. My fingers curled around his length and I found I didn’t quite know what to do. I squeezed experimentally and he choked on nothing, bucking into my touch. I smiled at that; humans weren’t all that hard to figure out really, just takes a little time. I repeated the motion, dropping kisses on his shoulder. That all seemed secondary now, his entire focus on my hand wrapped around him. I fanned out my fingers, spreading my hold from the base to the tip… and promptly got distracted. What…?_  
  
_I was afraid he’d whack me if I stopped touching him but I wanted to see! I had to use my forearm to roll him back over and he squeaked again, his hands flying out. “Wha? N-Nnn… don’t stop… what are you doing?”_  
  
_“I just wanna see,” I murmured, slipping down to lay between his legs… and stare. His hands flew to his mouth as he realized, looking mortified when I rubbed my thumb up the underside, then at the little bit which had intrigued me. There was a … ridge… around the … top? And it just ended on the underside. “Pine Tree, what…-”_  
  
_I ran my finger over the little gap and he arched off the bed suddenly, his hands flying down to his groin. They clenched when I pulled my finger away in shock. “Nerve! Nerve nerve nerve that’s a…. Nerve… warn a guy!” He suddenly blushed crimson and opened and clenched his hands repeatedly._  
  
_“So… don’t touch it?”_  
  
_“Um, you were just kinda … rough… it f-feels good when you’re gentle with i-!”_  
  
_Since I’d failed to be gentle with my fingers I leaned forward, pressing a kiss to the offending nerve. “Like that?” When I looked back up he was holding his breath._

 _He let out a little strangled “Yep!” and continued to hold his breath._  
  
_I narrowed my eyes. He didn’t seem like he was going to explain out loud but… “What’s a blowjob?” He was trying very hard to avoid thinking about whatever it was, but after my question, he couldn’t help the picture that formed in his head. My eyes widened and I grinned slowly. “Humans are gloriously filthy creatures...” I marveled and eyed his… dick… with renewed interest._

 _“You don’t have to! Really! I shouldn’t have thought that! I just… y-y-.. Oh fuck…” I held his gaze as I ran the flat of my tongue up the underside of him. He’d just given me a new name for the thing: cock. Pleased with this, I pressed another kiss to the nerve I’d found._  
  
_“I don’t have to, huh?”_  
  
_“Quit…. Gloating… I’m dying!”_  
  
_“I promise you’re not,” I crooned at him, running my hands along the backs of his thighs to hold him still, licking up the full underside again before fitting the … top … in my mouth. He arched naturally into my mouth… Filthy! I could feel myself smiling around him as I sunk farther down, my nails digging into his backside._  
  
_I didn’t really understand the point of this, to be honest. There didn’t really seem to be an end or a … point… humans indulged in sex to procreate and that wasn’t possible between the two of us. How did humans stop doing this? At what point did they …_  
  
_“Bill, ohmygodplease, I’m… You’re gonna make me…!” I could feel his abdominal muscles tightening under my nose. His hands were moving like he almost wanted to pull me off of him, but I very quickly learned of the ‘end.’_  
  
_I’m certain it was quite comical to watch my eyes pop open, staring up at him as he arched into my mouth, his own popped open with a very gratifying moan. I had no idea what fluid escaped him, other than that it was a protein compound. I experimentally dragged my mouth off, watching him twitch and gasp for air._

 _“I … Holy… fucking… that was… uhf!” He flopped on the bed, a silly smile on his face. I crawled over him, feeling a bit smug myself and ran my nose up his neck. He turned to look at me, grinning then blushed suddenly when I leaned in to kiss him again. “D-did you just… lick your lips?” he seemed both delighted and mortified about the thought._  
  
_“Yes? Is that…”_

 _“S’hott,” he breathed leaning into me, blushing even more now. I couldn’t quite figure out why until I noticed his hand slipping down **my** side. _  
  
_I raised an eyebrow, then pulled back with a questioning look._  
  
_That didn’t help his embarrassment. “Wh-What? H-haven’t you heard of ‘You scratch my back I’ll scratch yours’?”_  
  
_“That’s not my back.”_  
  
_“It’s an expression.”_  
  
_“... Well you have your answer. Clearly I haven’t.”_  
  
_He bit his lip, hard, and gently rolled me off without answering._

 _I tilted my head, watching him as he started to move … down there. I suddenly didn’t want to know what that felt like. In fact, I was shocked that my body had responded this way at all and stared down at the offending organ: it looked just like his had. “Wait! Wait wait.” I scrambled away, pulling fabric over my skin. I’d seen him wear loose pants and t-shirt while working the other day and went with something similar._  
  
_He froze, then stared at me, looking a little hurt… and almost left out. He tried to recover, patiently explaining, “Humans… usually return the favor. That’s what I meant.”_  
  
_“Yes. I … yes. I understand and… I’m flattered …” I groaned, realizing he probably thought I was trying to get out of something. “I’m not used to any of this. Learning you is one thing… Watching you respond… having that control over you like that…” I smiled a little, enjoying the image. “But I don’t want to lose … control… like that.”_  
  
_He nodded slowly, then his eyes cleared in understanding. “Like your stomach growling?”_  
  
_“Yes,” I said, relieved. “I don’t get… this…” I gestured down to my body. “You know how you respond and you find it embarrassing. I have no idea what will happen…”_  
  
_We both thought about that for a second. He recovered first. “Best take it slow then, yeah. Just in case you like, I dunno, light the house on fire when you cum or something.”_  
  
_“... Yeah.”_  
  
_“Yeah. Good. I’m gonna… pants. Yup.”_

_I felt quite pleased with our progress and watched him dress with a soft smile... then frowned. “Wait, what did that… what does ‘cum’ mean?”_


	18. Pillow Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pillow Talk with a death god... maybe not as endearing as you'd like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill’s note: *hangs head and rocks on his toes a little, looking thoroughly chastized.* I’m … really sorry this has taken so long. I … got stuck. I’ll… do a little better! I h-hope ;.; I’m sorry! *throws the thing at you*

It was a little while before we could look each other in the face. The afterglow had been a little broken but I found I had no regrets about what happened. I thought it would bother me more but … 

I caught him smiling at me a little.

That was… surreal. Utterly inexplicable. Bill and I on my bed, just staring at each other, sitting cross legged. There was no real way to break the ice after that, nothing I could think of to say that wouldn’t sound cheap or dismissive of that experience. That was the closest I’d ever been to another human being and he wasn’t human, he was a god in human shaped body, and he’d been the one … uhm… working me over. Shouldn’t the human be the one on their knees, serving? 

  
I flushed crimson at that thought as it registered. Could I see the past or just imagine it? Wearing white linen robes in a marble temple, his hand in my hair, looking up at him with hooded eyes… His face darkened in a blush and I’m sure I followed him. “S-so? Is… is that a memory? Or …”    
  
“Or your imagination?” He finished for me… then flopped on his back with an exaggerated sigh. “I have no idea.” His exasperated tone was endearing, the melodramatic flop onto my bed…    
  
I took pity on him and crawled over on my stomach, laying next to him as he flung an arm over his eyes, looking miserable. Drama queen.    
  
“I heard that,” he grumbled, but didn’t move.    
  
I smirked at him and wiggled a little closer, then poked him. “You going to recover or are we gonna have to call it?”   
  
He peeked at me. “Call it?”   
  
“No hope for you, no way back from here. Quality of life is just kaput… I don’t think you’ll recover from this heart shattering embarrassment,” I teased, looking somber. “Time of death,” I checked my watch, “Three fourty five pm. Cause seems unknown, possibly overstimulation.”    
  
“Why you impudent little …! I’ll show you overstimulation!” He sprung back to life, rolling me on my back and straddling my thighs, his fingers … !   
  
“S-Stop!” I couldn’t breathe, how did he know I was fucking ticklish? I squirmed, trying to buck him off and he relented, laughing at me. I blushed harder and smacked his thigh as he held me pinned. “Jerk!”    
  
“Mmm,” was all I got back, but he looked so pleased and sweet I blushed and reached for him. I kinda lost my nerve and tugged at the tail of his shirt, but he got the picture, stretching over me and nuzzling into my neck. “Mmm… Sorry I… y’know... “

I was already shaking my head. “S’fine, really. Just an IOU.” He lifted his head, confused. “I owe you,” I said slower as I slipped my fingers into his belt loops easily.

“So um… what do you think happened with my … nightmare?” He seemed almost sheepish but I narrowed my eyes. He was easier to read now that… well, now. He wasn't sorry about the nightmare. He was actually still smug about it. No, he was worried about how effective it had been and how mad I might still be about it.

I rolled my eyes but couldn't find it in myself to still be mad. I like bossy boys, didn't I? Overprotective was a comorbidity of bossy, and besides it was kinda sweet after I had a chance to think. “Dunno, Bill,” I managed to sound saltier than I thought possible from this position. “You didn't plague me so I can't tell how much they got or how scary it was. In fact,” I continued, running my thumbs over his hip bones gently, “I'm a little underwhelmed with the benefits package of dating a god here.” I blushed when that escaped my mouth, but I didn't think he'd know that euphemism without my telling him.

He smiled back a little, then affected a self righteous look on his face. “Well, we're barely dating. I mean we've only gone out once.”

I flashed harder at that and ducked my head. “Yeah but you… we…”

He grinned, putting me out of my misery. “Sex. Or is that intimacy? Seems like a grey area for you.”

I groaned and fell face first into my pillow. “Can we table that discussion? I think I need a nap.”

He just cuddled up next to me, smugness radiating off him. I wiggled closer for his body heat and sighed happily.

 

 

_ He was so much easier to read when sleeping … or perhaps I was just able to focus all my attention on the connection and less on his reaction. I propped up on an elbow and stroked through his hair slowly, trying to be soothing and not disruptive to his sleep. _

_ I'd seen three lives thus far. I slipped into his head to search for the things I'd seen. He'd told me Pluto, and I'd gotten Hades and Anubis, but I had no basis. I didn't submerge myself in his mind while I let the memories scroll. I couldn't stop and focus on them like this, linked with him, but I could see the cadence, the flow of our lives. Egypt was the first time I'd seen him. Greece felt much like this version in my arms, as though he'd found an unlikely partner in me. In Rome he felt bold and broken. _

_ Then I looked further. I hadn't seen this time, this time of the Aztecs. I gulped at the deal I'd struck, staring through the haze of memory at the kid. I mean, he was … I drew a blank. I certainly desired him but … _

_ I thought back to the look I'd taken at Weirdmagedon. At the bloodless carnage I'd wrought. Weirdness. A world subjected to chaos. If I'd won or been able to maintain that world, the breakdown of society would certainly have caused the disintegration of the planet's infrastructure and population mortality, but… to slaughter a nation of people? _

_ I looked down at the boy in the bed, willing the emotions I'd felt then to return. Sure, Dipper was alright and I didn't have the moral background to truly balk at killing all those people but I wanted to feel that same emotion that I had before. _

_ My thoughts must have crowded into his head because he blinked awake at that moment, then gave me a small, sweet smile. “Hi,” he rasped out, yawning wide. _

_ I grinned back and ruffled his hair. “Not enough sleep for you?” _

_ “How long’ve I been out?” He was adorable when he rubbed his eyes like that. _

_ I shrugged. “A couple hours.” I hadn't seen all of that lifetime, I'd gotten stuck at the deal. Pretty bold request from a simple village boy to a god. But then, he'd been bold with me this life time too.  _

_ He tilted his head, which was a funny thing to do at this angle and gave me a look. “See anything good?”  _

_ I gulped. He’d caught me. “Found another lifetime,” I offered, feeling the words catch uncomfortably in my throat.  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “Any good?” How did he look so peaceful, so content? He snuggled a little closer, hooking his fingers into the waistband of the pants I’d made. I shivered at the touch, curling a little more around him.  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “Didn’t get far, but … it didn’t exactly start out well.”  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “And the others did?” When I didn’t answer, he winced and scooted closer. “That bad. Alllright… well, maybe another time…” _ _   
_ _   
_ _ “Aztecs. In Middle America. There was … a war. Your people were struggling, dying… You needed help to win against this massive army… So you called me. Your people had heard of me, a death god, plagues and monsters and twins… and you called me and begged me to save your people.” I tightened my arms around the boy, leaning my face against him. “Begged me to kill them all. S-so I did.”  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ He froze, stiff and still in my arms, his fingers like claws on my hips. “You’re lying,” he said softly, horror and revulsion swamping him.  _ _   
_ _   
_ _ I didn’t say anything to disagree with him. It was pointless to try and convince him, pointless to show him. He wouldn’t believe me, not even if I showed him now.  _ _   
_ _   
_ __ “I… I’m still tired, I think.” He very carefully pulled away from my touch, but didn’t get up or kick me out of the bed. Silence stretched uncomfortably between us, stifling and painful as I waited for his breathing to even out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill’s note: I KNOW i know it’s been… an appalling amount of time since my last update. And this wasn’t a nice note to end on. So I’m -almost done- with 19! And and and I’ll post it post haste! Promise! I’m sorry ;.;


	19. Dream Weaver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dipper has a terrible dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bill’s note: see!? I told you it’d be soon! Yes! Demon of my word. Yes. Onward.

~~~~~   
The world shifted and warped. The endless sky was filled with specks of blue fire and broken tea cups, notebook pages and constellations as I fell down down down … How can you fall in a direction while in the endless void of space? How did I know this was down?    
  
Because Hell was waiting for me at the bottom. I knew, with certainty that I was falling down into the pit, meant for only the worst of all creation…   
  
The cage was a surprise though.

Sitting in all his glory upon a decadent throne was the demon - my demon, who else could be there… but it wasn’t the Bill I’d fallen asleep with. This wasn’t plaid and workboots, cooking in my kitchen and patching up my face no… no this was the sadistic bastard that had run this town, MY town through the chaos-grinder of Weirdmageddon and had … lost. “You lost?” I chuckled at the double meaning, finding that the space around the cage was solid, that I could pace back and forth before the bars, glaring at my enemy.    
  
Fluid grace rolled off of him as he startled out of the chair, his gold eye watching me, the other one (blue, I thought, it was bright, agonizingly blue…) hidden safely behind an eyepatch. “Pine Tree,” he cooed softly, plastering himself to the bars, his fingers curling sensuously around them and stroking slowly, deliberately up and down… his face was alight with perverse pleasure at the motion. “I wondered how long it would take you to find me down here… How -are- the trips down memory lane going, hmmm?”   
  
“He’s nothing like you Bill. How are you… You should be dead! That was our deal!”    
  
“Ah ah ah,” he tutted, wagging a finger at me. “You never really specified what you wanted. You only told me to … what was it? Ah yes… ‘Go fuck myself’.” He spreads his arms, gesturing to the cage. “Here I am, thoroughly fucked.”    
  
“Then what is all this bullshit about memories? Previous lifetimes! How can you  _ say that shit is real _ when … you…!” 

Suddenly he was back in my face, his eye burning brightly, his face serious, devoid of all that playful disregard he’d shown every other time. “It is. It’s real. Please, I …”    
  
My mind stuttered a little as he leaned in closer, showing the scars around the eyepatch. I raised a hand slowly, flicking a glance to make sure he wouldn’t try to bite me or something before I slipped it off, staring at the bright blue eye underneath.    
  
“Starving. I’m starving I’ve  _ been _ starving. I was a  _ god _ and then they forgot about me and it was like I was choking on nothing… I can’t die. So help me I  _ wanted _ to but I CAN’T and the only thing that could kill me was the circle. It was the only thing but then YOU were there and of course you were! How could I forget! You were theeeree and I thought maybe … maybe I wouldn’t have to. The memories are there, Pine Tree, y’just … gotta…  _ look! _ ”   
  
I reared back too late, FAR too late as he got a hold on my wrist and dug in his nails, drawing blood… could I bleed in this dream world? In his mindscape? My vision ran as my blood turned black and ran over his nails…    
  
**… but it wasn’t blood. It was paint. I was naked, standing in firelight, wearing a mask as I fell to my knees in front of Bill, my … my demon and begged not only for him to spare my life but for him to save us. It didn’t matter that I was asking him to slaughter thousands of other men… I hadn’t really thought of that in this moment… all I knew was that my people were dying and the crops were dying and everything was going to be ruined if we didn’t -do- something… So I begged.**

  
When I snapped back to the present, I was stumbling away from the cage, holding my head and staring at … at Bill. He was daintily licking my blood from his fingers and out from under his nails as I fell to my knees in the mindscape. “Help!” My voice was hoarse and felt scorched, like I’d swallowed a few pounds of sand.    
  
The fucker in the cage just rolled his eyes at me. “Really? You’re just going to call for him like a pathetic little princess?”    
  
_ “Fuck you, Cipher.”  _ __  
__  
His smile was slow and smug. “Oh baby, you have been…”   
  
I jerked as though I’d been slapped. “He’s… he’s not you. He’s NOTHING like you…! I would never…!”   
  
“You have and you will continue to. And the longer you let him remember, the more you’ll find he’s like me.”   
  
“NO! You can’t…” I was starting to hyperventilate now, panicking, my body shaking uncontrollably.   
  
“Baby, I’ve always been him. I let you lock the crazy away, the parts of me that you knew. I let you start over, with ‘him,’ with  _ me…   _ And the longer this deal goes on, the more our bond will let me heal, let me… recover.”    
  
“I JUST WANT YOU TO ROT AWAY AND DIE!” I rocked a little, hating him, hating everything.    
  
He crouched, looking sympathetic. “By the time that I no longer need this cage, you’ll want me out of it. Trust me.”   
  
“GO TO HELL!” I screamed it at him, nearly pulling my hair out as I scrambled away, trying to find purchase on the slippery smooth surface. “JUST FUCK OFF, DO YOU HEAR ME?! GO-” I suddenly ran out of solid flat space and plumeted off the edge, my scream torn from my throat as the void of space crushed me.    
  
“I think I’m losing you, what was that?” Bill’s mocking voice in my head as I hurtled into the sun was NOT helping…    
  
…. And I landed, face first on the bed. Next to Bill,  __ my Bill, plaid and work boots and messy hair and heterochromia and everything. He was holding my face, looking worried. “Are you…”    
  
I sobbed and threw my arms around him, unable to talk yet, burying my face in his neck. I was burning, and he was the sun and so help me I was happily crispy and I didn’t give one single fuck. I had no idea how to feel but I wasn’t going to give this up. Already the cage and … who had I just seen? … was fading. It would all be fine. I’d be fine. We’d be fine.    
  
I’d follow him anywhere. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ch 20 is totes being written! promisssse


	20. Taking Me Over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to figure out the title of this chapter was fun:  
> Bill: … uh… i dunno. E M O T I O N SSSSS  
> Dip: Do it.  
> Bill breaks into song: ‘Cuz it’s just EMOTIONS takin me over, caught up in sorrow looost in the s-’  
> Dip: I love you.

_He’d been asleep one moment, tucked up next to me in bed, rolled away from me. He was mad, appalled that I’d accused him of asking me to slaughter other humans, and that didn’t really surprise me. He was the one with the moral compass around here, not me. I couldn’t imagine a world where Dipper wasn’t good either; then again, he’d been doing good by his people so perhaps…?_   
  
_And then he was gone, tossed down the rabbit hole, like the bottom of his mind had fallen out and I’d tried to follow him but I’d suddenly gotten lost. Where was this place? I turned, looking around the inside of this Mindscape and realized it was … mine… it was inside -my- head and I hadn’t even noticed._   
  
_The place looked like shit. Everything was broken, scattered, like someone had been made to leave in a hurry, little scraps of paper and shards of memory floating around. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t want to know where this was or who had lived here. I could feel terror pulsing in the space between the stars, agony, my -own- agony crushing me. What had happened here? Was this me? Why did this chasm feel so … endless … The answer hit me before I could ponder it very long. If I had no beginning, and no bounds to the inside of my head, it could only mean one thing: I was immortal. I thought back to the memory of the pot in Ancient Greece, the argument that hadn’t really registered until now. Before, I’d only been pleased to see that we’d been arguing all along but now I could see the scene unfold before me._   
  
**_“I don’t understand why you won’t even -consider- my offer.”_ ** ****_  
_ ****_  
_ **_“I do everything you ask, my lord,” he spat the words at me, though they lacked the backing of venom that he’d intended. “Far more than I’d ever thought would be asked of me.”_ ** ****_  
_ ****_  
_ **_I reared back at that, the words lancing deep despite the lack of heat behind them. “You… you’d prefer that I keep my distance then? Stay away from you, leave your life in peace like you wanted then?!” My voice rose with my indignation. He was backing away from me NOW? He couldn’t, I wouldn’t allow it!_ ** ****_  
_ ****_  
_ **_“No! I …”_ ** ****_  
_ ****_  
_ **_“Insolence! How dare you think you could run from me…!” I closed the distance, wrapping my hand around his arm and tugging him close with a snarl on my face… And then he stomped on my foot and danced out of reach._ ** ****_  
_ ****_  
_ **_“You act as though I belong to you..! No more value than a possession!”_ ** ****_  
_ ****_  
_ **_“You -do- belong to me, -darling-... you are my soulmate, my lover. And we will spend eternity together if I have to change you by force!”_ ** ****_  
_ **_  
_ ** **_He nearly screamed he was so mad and hurled a pot at me, right at my chest. I stared, flabbergasted as he pointed at me, shaking with anger. “_ ** ****_If I’ve said this once, it’s been a thousand times, Hades, I will not be swayed! This life is mine to live and you cannot take my death from me. Do not bring it up again!”_

 

**_I could feel my face harden in that moment as I purposefully let the pottery drop from my fingers onto the floor, turning away as it shattered at my feet. I ignored his shriek of outrage and just walked away. He didn’t, couldn’t know how much those words had hurt me, how badly wounded I was at his refusal to spend eternity at my side. I must have done something wrong… I sighed. Humans could be so fickle. I’d simply have to apologize and approach this another way… I wasn’t planning on losing him again._ **

 

_It was Dipper who saved me from that memory, leaping into my arms in the real world and pulling me from the hellish vision I’d gotten caught in. I’d thought that the past was easier to see when I touched him, but it was so real inside my own mind. I didn’t want to go back there, not without him, it was too much. I buried my face in his neck as he cried, rocking him, comforting and silently taking comfort back. All these fragments coming back to us, out of order, stolen moments and painful truths…_

 

 _When his sobs turned to sniffles, he had the wherewithal to switch shoulders. I chuckled unsteadily. “Soaked that one already?”_   
  
_His sad little sniff was enough answer, but he mumbled “That shoulder has snot on it. Good thing you don’t have to wash clothes, huh?”_   
  
_My turn to laugh as I rubbed up and down his back. “I make them, Dip. I can -feel- through these clothes.”_   
_  
_ He froze then, and slowly peeled his face away, somehow looking fascinated and horrified at the same time. “So you’re… naked all the time?” He ended that statement on a squeak; it was cute.

 _“Remember what I said about limited human thinking?”_   
  
_“I’m not sure you said that this lifetime,” he grumbled, pulling his hands away, then stopping, an interested look in his eyes. “You said… that you weren’t sure what your reaction would be. To … to stuff.”_   
  
_“Sex.”_   
  
_“Yeah that.”_   
  
_Adorable. “Not sure where this is going, but.. Yes, I said that.”_   
  
_He blushed a little and ran a finger down the front of the shirt, his nails catching on the buttons. I hadn’t really thought about feeling through the clothes but now that I was aware I could… I shivered when he said “And you’ve had me crawling on you for days now…”_   
  
_Ah, so that’s where he was headed with this. My smile was smug as I wrapped my arms around his waist and tugged him closer. “Get to the point, Pine Tree.”_   
  
_He looked up at me from under his lashes, curiosity fighting with whatever had haunted him in my head. Neither of us wanted to talk about our respective experiences, but neither seemed ready to move on to … other things. Yet. “So why do you ever take anything off?”_   
  
_I smiled at the easier question and flopped back in bed, leaving him in my lap as I stretched. “Or indeed put them on! I -could- just go around naked.”_   
  
_“Public indecency!”_   
  
_“Demon.”_   
  
_“No, you’re a god now.”_   
  
_“Now? Seems like I always was. And besides, calling -yourself- a god seems a little bit vain, doncha think?”_   
_  
_ “Heaven forbid Bill Cipher seem vain.”

 _“You’re the expert on Bill Cipher, kid. All I know about me is that I’m yours.”_   
_  
_ That seemed to stop him. Whatever he’d been about to say after that stuck in his throat and he went back to hiding on my dry shoulder, curled up on top of me. I couldn’t tell if I’d said something right or wrong or both, but I just held him. It didn’t really matter which it was anyways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOLY SHIT an update wtf the sky is falling


End file.
